

Sparkfun offering discounts on Arduino day - erre
https://www.sparkfun.com/arduinoday

======
Eduardo3rd
$3 for a micro controller as powerful as the Pro is absolutely insane. I
remember paying 10x that price for some components for an early generation
Arduino back in college 5 years ago. Eventually I'm sure that $3 will be the
normal retail price for these boards, at which point I think we will start to
see some amazingly disruptive disposable electronics emerge.

Isn't it great to live in the future?

~~~
ballooney
The arduino is really just a breakout board for a microcontroller made by
Atmel, with a simplified development environment to lower the barrier to
entry. The microcontroller chip itself has always been a couple of dollars,
and was before the arduino was invented.

Really you could say that paying $20/board to break out a $2 chip was the
insane bit (of course, if it makes the difference between you tinkering and
not tinkering, totally worth it). It certainly hasn't been the cost of making
arduinos that's been holding back your 'amazingly disruptive disposable
electronics' \- no chinese factory will have been paying more than a few cents
in total parts costs for their mass-produced widgets of this sort for years
now.

If you want garage-tinkering-friendly microcontrollers, can I tempt you with
the newish NXP LPC810 [1]? It has a 32-bit core which can run at 30MHz (as
compared to the 8-bit core running at about 16MHz on the arduino, iirc), and
they're $1.37 in single units, less than 60 cents if you want 1000. ARM
maintain a whole GNU toolchain [2] to develop on them - it couldn't be easier.

[1] [http://www.digikey.com/product-
detail/en/LPC810M021FN8FP/568...](http://www.digikey.com/product-
detail/en/LPC810M021FN8FP/568-10182-5-ND/3925130)

[2] [https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded](https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-
embedded)

~~~
tdicola
An Arduino is a little more complicated than a breakout for the ATmega.
There's a power regulator so you can use any 6-12V supply, a USB to serial
converter chip (FT232R), and various passive components to support the chip.

The LPC810 is neat, but very limited in flash memory and I/O. Check out the
NXP LPC1114FN28--it's a 28 pin breadboard friendly DIP package ARM cortex M0:
[http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m0_m0/lp...](http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m0_m0/lpc1100/LPC1114FN28.html)
32k of flash and a similar amount of I/O as the ATmega328P used in an Arduino.
The big advantage of ARM is that you can use free in circuit debugging tools
like OpenOCD to debug and step through code in real time on the chip. It's not
easy to do that on an Arduino without a $50+ adapter.

------
danielweber
As a n00b, what's the minimum I need to have to play with an Arduino? Will
generally any Linux / Windows / Mac computer be able to run the software and
connecting hardware I need to program it?

~~~
morganherlocker
Pretty much. I set one up for the first time a couple weeks ago and it could
not have been easier. Bare minimum "hello world" would basically just be a
board, a USB cable, a computer with a USB port, and an LED.

~~~
bradyd
As FYI (you may already know this @morganherlocker, so this is for the n00bs)
there is a controllable LED built into the UNO (and similar boards) attached
to pin 13, so this is possible without any additional parts. In addition to
LEDs and a breadboard, some push buttons, and maybe a photoresitor or a rotary
potentiometer to play around with analog inputs are all good starting items.

------
Yhippa
Any recommendations for what to get if you're looking to get into developing
on the Arduino?

~~~
coreymgilmore
Uno R3 is your best bet. Simple to use and is the basis for most projects.
Plus, it has USB for communication while some other boards don't.

~~~
127001brewer
What about the "RedBoard"
([https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11575](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11575))?

~~~
sbarron
For that purpose, the redboard is essentially the same as an UNO. I have one
of each and can swap them out with no problems.

~~~
Thrymr
Redboard also has a USB mini connector, not the full sized square one that
standard Uno has. Personally I'd prefer the mini connector, I've always
thought that the USB connector was the most oversized thing on an Arduino
board.

~~~
colechristensen
The inertia the USB mini connector has in the electronics development arena
has annoyed me for years. The connector was deprecated in 2007 and replaced by
the rather superior and now very prevalent micro, yet builders just don't seem
to want to switch.

------
austinz
Is there a toolchain I can use to compile and load plain C onto Arduino
boards? I'm not too familiar with the development environment, although I'd
like to try some stuff out with the hardware I have.

~~~
kh_hk

        Q: Can I use an Arduino board without the Arduino software?
        A: Sure. It's just an AVR development board, you can use straight AVR C or
           C++ (with avr-gcc and avrdude or AVR Studio) to program it.
    
        From: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ
    

As a side note, if you are feeling fancy, you can build your own firmware
based on LUFA and load them into the Atmega chip the boards have as an USB-to-
serial converter. That opens a world for pretty cool hacks too.

~~~
austinz
Excellent! Thanks a lot.

------
tomswartz07
I have an old R1 Uno, and I've always been interested in the smaller form
factor devices.

How exactly are the devices like the Pro and Mini programmed? I've never been
able to get a straight answer.

~~~
kruffin
You use a breakout board to get the connector you need to hook it up to your
computer. So for the 5v mini you would get something like this:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9716](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9716)

You then either solder on some headers and connect it to the breakout, program
it, and then disconnect it when done or do some funky alligator clip madness
to connect the breakout to the arduino.

Note that the pro already has the pins waiting for the breakout to be
connected.

------
lsiebert
You can get a uno clone from China for 9-10 us plus free Shipping.

------
antonio0
US only?

~~~
erre
I don't see anything on that page that suggests it's US-only. Generally
speaking, Sparkfun delivers internationally:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/static/customer_service#ShippingPol...](https://www.sparkfun.com/static/customer_service#ShippingPolicy)

