
Damn you, Arduino...I have no free time for this. - ryanwaggoner
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/10/damn-you-arduino-i-have-no-free-time-for-this/
======
replicatorblog
Ryan, I really like a lot of your posts, but some of them feel a little light
for HN. This one could be summarized as "I got an Arduino, Physical products
are really cool". Kind of bummed its #1 right now. Nothing personal against
you, just that personality rather than content seems to be rocketing things up
the page.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
That's fair, and this is the thing I worry about the most with my blog. Part
of the problem is that a bunch of my readers aren't technical, so I sometimes
wonder how deep I should go on technical posts. As far as HN goes, I submit a
lot of the stuff I write, but _only_ because a fairly large percentage seems
to find some traction here, so I guess people enjoy it. That's not necessarily
proof that it's quality content, but as I've written about in the past, it's
really hard for me to gauge whether I'm ultimately creating value through my
writing. Popularity isn't really as useful a metric as one might think :)

Anyway, thanks for the comment, and let me know what kinds of posts of mine
you've enjoyed, and what I can do to make all my posts more valuable to you.

EDIT: I should add that my recent post on finding a good IDE found little
traction, despite being more in-depth and technical. Perhaps it was just a
fluke though...

EDIT 2: I've updated the blog post with a more in-depth review of the Arduino
and the Sparkfun kit.

~~~
cromulent
As someone who grew up on Dick Smith's Fun Way Into Electronics kits [1], I
love the Arduino. I can see three Arduinos on my desk as I type. I'm not so
smart with electronics, but it is a lot of fun, and it's a golden age for this
kind of thing.

[1] Dick Smith is a successful Aussie entrepreneur who created a chain of
hobby electronics stores and sold the chain when it had (I think) 200
employees and he couldn't remember all their names, so it wasn't so much fun
anymore.

When Redhead matches was bought by overseas interests, he created Dickhead
matches in protest and sold them in Aussie supermarkets.

He jumped a double-decker bus over 15 motorbikes when I was a kid, parodying
Evel Knievel. He was my hero.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_(entrepreneur)>

He recently created the Wilberforce award - "$1 million to go to a young
person under 30 who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her
ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population
and consumption growth-obsessed economy."

<http://dicksmithpopulation.com/wilberforce-award/>

"It has become obvious to me that my generation has over exploited our
wonderful world – and it’s younger people who will pay the price."

Edit: He's also a founder and patron of the Australian Skeptics.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Skeptics>

Edit 2: Picture of the bus jumping the motorcycles

<http://www.dropbears.com/m/models/specials/busjump.htm>

~~~
follower
You might enjoy this nostalgic look back at the Fun Way kits:
[http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/australian-
elect...](http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/australian-electronics-
nostalgia-funway-kits/) :)

------
follower
Small world. I actually worked on some of the content for the Inventor's Kit
guide. When you read "You want orange, you want teal, you want aubergine!"
that's me. :)

Happy to receive feedback on the guide as you work through it.

I was introduced to the Arduino nearly four years ago and actually earn income
now from Physical Computing related teaching, writing and project development.

Creating tangible things and escaping the world of the purely virtual is
really fun. (I write as I'm surrounded by a soldering iron and a bunch of XBee
related components. :) )

(I was actually planning to submit the original of the following video but
DEFCON's taken them down for some reason. But...if you're interested in a
security-slanted introduction to the Arduino you might be interested in this
session I co-presented at DEFCON18 this year about the Arduino:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XotF9FyiAZc> )

If you get the chance to play with some of this stuff, do it!

[Oh, and, that whole flashing LED buzz is an interesting phenomenon and it
continues as you gain experience--except instead of signifying you've got
everything installed okay it might mean your signal has reached the satellite
and returned back again. :D ]

~~~
detcader
I already bought an Arduino, but now I want all this stuff from the inventor
kit! Should I just buy parts as I need, or are there any other kits like this?

~~~
follower
I'm most familiar with the SparkFun kits and I don't think all the same
components are available in a separate kit without the Arduino.

Although, I would say, I don't think you can have too many Arduinos. :D

You can buy the individual components separately but sometimes the bundled
price is less.

This kit still has the Arduino but might be another option with a smaller
selection:
[http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9952)

Or if you want to go all out there's this megabundle of sensors with no
Arduino:
[http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=10027)
:)

Hope that helps.

------
ryanwaggoner
It's been brought to my attention that this post is disappointingly light on
content and substance, and after some careful reflection, I agree. So I've
updated the post with a more in-depth review of the Arduino and Sparkfun
Inventor's Kit. This is intended largely for technical people who haven't
played with electronics much, but are interested in getting started. Let me
know if there's other things I can cover in the review, and I'll try to be
more in-depth and judicious with my submissions in the future.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I've had other people tell me the same thing.

I've been an embedded software guy forever so it can be hard to remember how
much fun it was to blink an LED, but the excitement on the faces of
experienced (non-embedded) SW people when they blink that first LED, or move a
servo motor or whatever is palpable. There's a reason I never moved onto the
desktop or server world: this stuff is addictive :-)

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mvolz
You can replicate this delightful experience with:

    
    
      *A normal breadboard and circuit components
    
      *Matlab with DAQ Toolbox included (not all versions have this toolbox)
    
      *An analog to digital converter, such as a National Instruments USB-6008

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stilldavid
I work for SparkFun and feel the same way: there is simply never enough time
for projects :) I was just talking to marketing to see if I could get a HN
discount code if anyone wants to play with an Arduino for the first time. If
you're interested shoot me an email and I'll see if I can convince them;
dave@sparkfun.com

~~~
moswald
What Arduino kit would you recommend for a "competent" beginner? Is the linked
kit a good option? Better options? Thanks in advance.

~~~
stilldavid
The inventor's kit is really great if you are getting started or re-started.
If you've got a specific project in mind you want to work on, I'd highly
recommend any of the Arduino "shields" that match your project. We (and
others) have them with GPS, LCDs, an Ethernet stack, GSM modules, wifi -- you
name it. It keeps the simplicity of the Arduino platform, but lets you play
with more advanced stuff.

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akeefer
For anyone in the Bay Area that wants to play around with an Arduino, Mitch
Altman runs fairly regular workshops (every few months) at Noisebridge up in
San Francisco. (<https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge>)

------
billswift
There is an opportunity for a side-business here. I cannot download really big
files, so I buy my linux distros on DVDs. I wasn't able to find anyone selling
Arduino, when I asked on a Arduino forum a nice person mailed me a copy, but I
think someone with a fast connection and a web site could make a few dollars
extra downloading and packaging open source software for people who can't
download their own. I doubt that there is enough demand for this to be a main
source of income, but the marginal costs if you already have a way of taking
credit cards and the fast connection should be minimal.

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JonnieCache
I can reccommend <http://hackaday.com> for DIY-hardware based fun. Ryan is
right, the purchase of an arduino will spell the end of what little free time
HN users have left :)

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ptorrone
hi everyone - use the code HACKERNEWS on adafruit.com and you'll get 10% all
our arduino products and our kits. this expires on sunday so buy quickly, we
usually do not discount arduinos :)

~~~
vyrotek
Do you ever plan on carrying the Netduino?

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jtbigwoo
There's something great about making something that affects the physical
world, isn't there? I've written programs that manage billions of dollars and
websites that support millions of users, yet I still get a thrill out of
simple stuff like wiring an outlet or building a shelf.

------
tomg
Arduinos are a ton of fun, myself and a couple other startup/web dev/hackers I
know have gotten into them recently.

Warning: Shameless plug ahead

<http://blog.tomgraft.com/tag/arduino/>

~~~
sharpemt
I took a contest at my school to make a gps-waypoint-driven (rc)car.

Was really interesting interfacing the arduino with an h-bridge for motor
control, GPS module, and servo.

These are powerful little devices.

The small bit of documentation I attempted is here: <http://arduino-
car.blogspot.com/>

------
base2john
Thrilled that this is #1 for now. HN "Hackers" need to realize that the
physical world exists beyond the console.

~~~
davidw
Sure, we do, but it's so pleasant to live in a space where you can do so much
without having to go out and buy things or otherwise wait on the physical
world. It's nice to work and learn on your own time at your own pace.

------
mambodog
This is pretty cool, it seems just like the Lego Mindstorms[1] set I had as a
kid, but without the rounded edges and nice connectors.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms>

------
agentultra
Arduino's are neat, I have one too. One caveat to be aware of is that
Processing isn't very portable yet; so it's a bit of a lock-in there.

TI has some neat micro-controller kits in the same vein as the Arduino you
should google for. Cheap too.

~~~
follower
> One caveat to be aware of is that Processing isn't very portable yet; so
> it's a bit of a lock-in there.

Processing (<http://processing.org/>) is different to the Arduino although the
IDEs are based on the same code base. While the Arduino "language" is related
to Wiring (<http://wiring.org.co/>) it's different too.

By lock-in do you mean lock-in in relation to the language/libraries (which is
really a documented subset of C++) or the microcontroller (Atmel based)?

~~~
agentultra
It's pretty much language/libraries. You can (and later, when you start
writing sufficiently advanced projects w/ 'real-time' needs) write code on the
low-level io. This isn't really supported or well documented and kind of
defeats the purpose of being "portable."

The thing is that the language/libraries are a very stripped sub-set of C++
and their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++
programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code.

The arduino APIs like digitalWrite do table-lookups to match the pin, port,
and bit. Pretty inefficient and slow.

It's still a great little system though. People have come up with alternative
implementations that (for example) implement the SBI/CBI instructions as
constants you can use when calling the Arduino APIs to make things much
faster. And it's not like you'll care about "lock in" unless you start
building large projects and get tired of the Arduino way of doing things and
want to move to an alternate board. Arduino makes a nice cheap kit and starter
package for people who want to get their feet wet in embedded systems.

~~~
follower
> their IDE does a lot of parsing/mangling to turn "sketches" into C++
> programs. It can mangle perfectly legal C++ code.

AFAIK the parsing is limited to extracting function prototypes for creating
the function declarations which I wouldn't call "a lot". This has been known
to miss certain legal C++ function prototypes formats though. Normally the
solution is to manually write the declaration yourself and format the
prototype so it doesn't get parsed.

It's not a hugely common occurrence though.

It is true that optimisation/efficiency hasn't been a huge focus and the lack
of focus on it is "development policy":
<http://code.google.com/p/arduino/wiki/DevelopmentPolicy>

While it's definitely not perfect the fact that it's based on avr-gcc makes
the risk of lock-in less of an issue than some other platforms.

Plus, it's fun. :)

~~~
agentultra
Quite true. I can be a little knit-picky.

However, those are the trade off's and that's not even all of them. It is
possible because of avr-gcc to bypass the whole "sketch" thing they have going
and compile/load your code without even running the iDE.

Like I said, I do like Arduino for what it is. :)

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paraschopra
@ryanwaggoner: Bug report -- the link to Sparkfun is broken

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Fixed, thanks!

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madaerodog
well, glad to hear that :D . and let me twist the knife in your "wound" : Join
our community! <http://harkopen.com> \- and get more open source hardware
projects , news and hackerspaces near you

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looor
lol... I had the exact same thoughts when I got my Arduino a couple months
ago. Now time to find a project...

~~~
Malic
Oh comment bait! With an Arduino, you could...

* Generate NTSC signals - <http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/TVout> * Make a mini http server - <https://code.google.com/p/webduino/> * Drive nixie tubes - <http://www.ogilumen.com/nixie-nixie-driver-kits-p-92.html> (don't kill yourself on the voltages)

Sigh. So many little projects, so little time...

