
Arduino Yún – combining Arduino with Linux - whalesalad
http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/05/18/welcome-arduino-yun-the-first-member-of-a-series-of-wifi-products-combining-arduino-with-linux
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neya
This is groundbreaking. Imagine ALL of your devices in your home (fans,
lights, TVs, refrigerators, etc.), powered by this little board, being able to
communicate with your home computer, which in turn can let it communicate with
the internet. Imagine driving on the highway and you see a message on your
iPhone "You forgot to turn off the lights in your balcony. Would you like to
turn it off, now?"

We need more Arduino-based startups more than photo sharing sites and hipster
apps. Then this world will become truly advanced!

(I'm not saying the technology isn't there right now, I'm just saying the
common man needs to be able to afford this too.)

EDIT: I know the Raspberry Pi can do it already, but the Arduino will probably
fit better into basic electrical gadgets like the regular fan, light, etc. I
think a fan having a HDMI port (Raspbeery Pi) would be awkward, no? That's why
I think this is 'groundbreaking' for the Arduino community.

~~~
wiredfool
The crux right now is that it's pretty expensive to control things in the real
world. One thing, fine. A couple things in close proximity, also ok. Many
things, distributed over the house? Expensive.

Lets think of one device, a relay (or solidstate relay) that controls an
outlet.

You need:

A radio, or a powerline networking unit ($10). Some sort of processor ($45 for
a Pi w/ps and sd card). Some low level logic to connect to the relay ($.25),
the relay ($2), and the power socket ($2).

If you want to control two outlets at one place, you're only duplicating from
the low level stuff to the power socket. That's another $5.

If you want to do this at a location that's more than a usb cable away from
site #1, you're in for another $50.

The holy grail here is a wifi enabled power socket. All it needs is a small
api: status and on/off. Bonus points if there's a current sensor. This could
be done with the processor from Bunny's $12 phone and the power relay bits.

But, it's got to be priced in the $10/socket range.

~~~
krapht
X10 powered sockets are $20, and do exactly what you described, yet don't have
wide adoption at all.

~~~
wiredfool
They've been around forever, and I dismissed them back in the internet dark
ages because they only had crappy windows software and their obnoxious
intrusive ads seemed to be all about "security" cameras pointing at scantily
clad women.

/me realizes that I've just dated myself here.

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stephengillie
Interesting -- this is basically the merger of an Arduino Leonardo and a
pocket router. The flavor of Linux in use is a spinoff from OpenWRT, a popular
home router OS. The chip that runs on is the Atheros AR9331. Since OpenWRT
supports other languages, you can now program this device in Python.

AR9331 pinout: <http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n/ar9331_pinout>

~~~
zdw
Agreed. The Atheros chips tend to be much better supported - you actually get
non-binary blob wireless drivers, which is a big problem with Broadcom-based
devices like the venerable Linksys WRT54G and similar.

OpenWRT is quite nice, and ships with a Lua based web interface, which is
ideal for a low memory/CPU device like a router.

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diydsp
Embedded hardware developer/DSP programmer here: An interesting turn in the
life of the Arduino turned out to be that people used it not so much as an
embedded processor, but as a peripheral extension of their laptops and
desktops.

Laptops and desktops (with some exceptions...) simply don't have the
peripherals (such as DACs, PWM, analog ins) which people need to deal with
sensors and robotics. Therefore, Arduino's micro-peripherals were a welcome
addition to the world.

Combining the workstation core (CPU) and network into one place gives the
Arduino a greater level of autonomy than it used to have. It can now do much
more without requiring that it's attached (tethered or "tumored") to a
desktop.

Whether the price and features make it worthwhile is impossible to predict. We
are in an explosion of microcontroller/embedded development right now and
devices are coming out faster than people can fully learn to appreciate them
(Commodore 64 junkie). It's probably best to pick the platform that has the
strongest support community or the one you know the components of the best.

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sigkill
You used to be able to hack on the arduino without needing SMD components and
a reflow station. Electronics newbies don't have those and arduino was
targeted towards them. Now, they've become a component supplier, since you
can't buy your own chips and hack a board on your own if you don't have an
etched PCB or someway to get that. I love the libraries and platform but in
the quest for more power (Mega, Due, SMD based arduinos etc.) I don't like the
fact that they're shunning newbies.

~~~
tdicola
I used to think the same thing, but really most SMD soldering isn't that
difficult with some practice and a nice fine point soldering iron. Check out
Dave Jone's videos at the EEVBlog, he has some great ones on SMD soldering
like [http://www.eevblog.com/2011/07/18/eevblog-186-soldering-
tuto...](http://www.eevblog.com/2011/07/18/eevblog-186-soldering-tutorial-
part-3-surface-mount/)

Also just because an Arduino board is built with SMD or very small components
doesn't mean a user has to do the same thing. This board has the same headers
for input/output as any other Arduino so you can attach existing shields, put
on a protoboard, or just plug wires in directly. I don't see how the Yun does
anything to shun newbies.

~~~
sigkill
You may have a good point. But I don't think it's feasible to buy a Atmega2560
and then build a custom pcb. Majority would rather buy an Arduino Mega for
their project and be done with it rather than building a custom board.

My previous comment tries to convey that you need to leave the Arduino in the
project instead of just using it as a prototyping platform once you go SMD.
Well sure, that'd increase sales for arduino boards.

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jedahan
Interested to see how it stacks up vs <http://www.sparkdevices.com/> in
practicality of projects. I'll be getting both to see...

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zwieback
Doesn't seem like a great idea to combine a low-end micro with and embedded
Linux WiFi module. I've worked on systems with that type of architecture and
ended up wishing I had one more powerful micro that does both.

I still like the Arduino platform but this seems like the wrong direction with
so many capable low cost ARM boards to choose from.

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mowfask
I liked the gradation of Arduino - Raspberry Pi - Beagleboard [Add further
boards to liking]. This Yún thing seems like a step into the direction of "10
different boards, that all do the same thing".

On the other hand, more competition is probably healthy for this market...

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lclarkmichalek
One can only hope this causes the price of existing wifi shields to decrease.

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kawsper
I don't understand how the two layers talk to each others.

How easy is it to get the eATMega324 to talk to AR9331?

Is it done by supplying a special package for the Arduino?

~~~
mowfask
On the slide it shows an SPI- as well as uart-connection. Both should be very
straight-forward to use, either relying on external libraries or by writing
them yourself.

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etrautmann
Also check out the Spark Core (disclaimer: a classmate started this). It hits
the $39 price point and combines a 72 MHz Cortex M3 and wifi.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-
core-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-core-wi-fi-
for-everything-arduino-compatible)

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VLM
"strong integration between the creativity of your sketch and the power of
Linux"

Got real excited for awhile, then realized they mean liberal arts generic
meaning of the word "sketch" and not the nifty into to programming language
named "Sketch". Sketch now with I/O, that would be cool.

~~~
DHowett
They more likely meant the Arduino-specific term "sketch", which has been co-
opted to mean things unrelated to both the language and the art form.

~~~
VLM
Even more embarrassingly I was thinking of the "scratch" programming language.
Sorry. Being able to upload scratch as a sketch to your yun to animate a
sketch would be cool.

The desire for a rasp-pi with the shape and form and I/O plug compatible with
the arduino shield ecosystem is probably a common desire and I hope it arrives
soon. Someday there will be an arduino running sketch with a COTS arduino
motor shield (or whatever) plugged into it.

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31reasons
I am not a hardware guy so pardon my ignorance, but my question is , if you
already have a full general purpose computer running linux on a board, why do
you need Arduino on that board also ? can't you just connect sensors directly
to the linux box ?

~~~
wiredfool
The arduino has a nice set of shields for interfacing with sensors and other
hardware. Its gpio outputs also tend to be more convenient than the GPIO from
the PI.

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brohoolio
I contributed to a project which is doing something similar. It's a bit better
because it has a low power transmitter for communication between units.

<http://pinocc.io/>

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gbog
I wonder if some day we will see cool things with real Chinese names, I mean
Chinese characters. Here it would be Arduino云

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stupandaus
For those curious, Yún means cloud (雲/云 in traditional/simplified Chinese).

