

Arduino tweet notifier built with Johnny-Five - varunkumar
http://blog.varunkumar.me/2012/09/arduino-tweet-notifier.html?m=0

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jgrahamc
The whole Firmata/Johnny-Five thing is weird to me. What happens is the code
you write runs in the host computer (not the Arduino) using nodejs and then it
uses the Firmata protocol to tell the Arduino to twiddle some digital
ports/read some analog ports etc. The Arduino is a complete slave to the host
machine and basically acting as an I/O mechanism.

To me the joy of microcontrollers is that you write some code that runs in
them independently of anything else and then you can make cool stuff with
them, such as [http://blog.jgc.org/2012/05/simonoids-its-simon-in-
altoids-c...](http://blog.jgc.org/2012/05/simonoids-its-simon-in-altoids-
can.html)

In the example in the article, why bother with Arduino? Just get a USB LCD
display and talk to it directly.

~~~
_neil
I somewhat agree. Getting something working quickly with Johnny-five is very
satisfying and to someone who is new to arduino/microcontrollers, that's a
huge benefit. In many cases, you can potentially save the time you would have
spent researching (for example) wireless boards, potential power issues,
waiting on shipping for any extra components, etc.

Then when you're done, you realize your project is tethered to your host
machine. But you have something working and can at least continue to play with
it while you figure out how to get it working independently.

Also, I'm sure there are some cases where projects will benefit from being
tied to the host machine anyways.

* Editing to say that I'm sure the electrical engineers among us will scoff at the dumbing-down of an already dumbed-down Arduino environment. But for the web devs who are starting with zero experience with embedded programming and electrical issues, it really helps to bridge the chasm from a screen to something we can touch.

