

Why Arduino is a hit with hardware hackers - Rod
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/hardware-hobbyists-arduino/

======
Groxx
Summary + meta-summary from watching the Arduino community for a few years:

Because it's cheap, and because it's awesomely simple to use. It's a
hobbyist's dream come true.

If you're interested in some of its uses, just look back through Make
magazine's site. Loads and loads and loads of projects appear there.

~~~
jgrahamc
Yes, Arduino is very cool. I'm working on a project that I'm calling
"Spaceduino" to use an Arduino as the flight computer for a high-altitude
balloon.

The idea is to have the Arduino interfaced to a Telit GPS and GSM unit plus a
433Mhz radio for telemetry downlink. I'll launch the balloon to take
photos/videos of near space and use the telemetry to track the balloon for
recovery.

~~~
borisk
Interesting. How are you planning to recover the balloon?

~~~
jgrahamc
So, balloon will be attached to the payload box via rope which has two things
attached to it: a parachute and a radar reflector. Reflector is there so
aircraft can see the contraption, the parachute will be open all the time, but
doing nothing as the balloon ascends.

Once the balloon bursts (somewhere over 30km) the parachute will slow the
fall.

Throughout the payload will broadcast its location derived from GPS over a
433Mhz link (probably RTTY) which I can track. Once at a low altitude (not
sure how low yet) and within GSM range the payload will also SMS its location
to another cell phone.

This should give me enough data to find the balloon. Plus there is software to
do balloon trajectory prediction based on weather forecasts. That'll give me a
general idea of route as well.

Also, on a clear day the entire thing will be visible from the ground using
high-powered binoculars or a small telescope. If I have time I'd like to get
automatic ground tracking in place by attaching a Yagi antenna to a powered
telescope and using the downlinked balloon location to steer the telescope to
train the antenna on it and to get video of the balloon's ascent. That last
part may be beyond my budget unless someone's got a steerable telescope mount
that has a computer interface (RS-232/423 or USB) that they'd like to give me
:-)

I plan to use a small video camera that will be activated at altitude to
record HD video of near space (and the descent). Currently thinking of a Slide
HD which can record 4 hours of video and is small and light, but this part
isn't nailed yet.

This is actually a really complex project: navigation, telemetry, all the
balloon related aspects, interface with ATC, temperature extremes, weather,
...

~~~
MHordecki
This sounds really ambituous. I seriously hope your plan will succeed! Just be
sure to document the whole adventure in a.series of blogposts. Project like
that is bound to top HN's front age in an instant.

~~~
jgrahamc
Others have gone before me, so there's lots of assistance out there. But it
should be fun documenting it. Look for my first blog post soon.

------
acgourley
And because it's so popular, there are a bunch of libraries and tutorials for
it. It also abstracts or designs away a lot of the tedium in programing micro-
controllers.

The net effect? It's like python for hardware.

------
aperiodic
At first, I loved it because it's pretty cheap, and I could just plug it into
my USB port and start coding, without having to worry about making a
programmer or buying a USB/Serial interface.

Now, I love it because it's pretty cheap, and it has full GCC toolchain
support, so I don't have to use some proprietary IDE.

------
jimmyjim
Cool, I'd been meaning to get an Arduino microcontroller myself.

Can anyone give examples of the more interesting projects that are being done
with the Arduino that you know of?

~~~
maqr
I ordered a sanguino kit and learned to solder at the same time :)

If you're interested in learning the whole parts procurement process, you can
also buy a PCB of pretty much any arduino-based board with no components, then
pick out the components you want yourself and solder away.

~~~
ovi256
For auxiliary hardware for the Arduino, use a breadboard, and get components
from a salvaged electronic device - an old pre-2000s TV is best, but anything
will do: a radio, stereo system. They should ideally be pretty old so that
they contain enough discrete components. Newer stuff is all SoC - System on a
Chip - just a big proprietary non-reusable chip and very few other components.

You can desolder and reuse pretty much any component: connectors, passive
elements (resistors, capacitors), switches, active elements (diodes,
transistors), LEDs, speakers, relays. You can even reuse bigger functional
blocks like power supplies or power amplifiers. I used to do this all the time
when I was a teenager.

Nothing like having an idea at midnight and scavenging the components to try
it out at once, and not having to wait next day to buy them. Plus, it reduces
e-waste, which is horrible to recycle, despite what we are told.

And stay safe, learn you electric safety rules!

PS: nice first project idea - light alarm that wakes you up in the morning,
like the fancy, pretty expensive Phillips Wake-up Light Alarm devices. Later,
make the light able to fade-in using maybe a thyristor. A nice enclosure is
hard to make though - that's where Phillips has the advantage.

------
CamperBob
The BeagleBoard is stuck in a no-man's-land between low-end 8-bit controllers
like Arduino and the many other AVR/PIC platforms, and a full-fledged embedded
PC. If I want to monkey with Linux and take advantage of a full 1 GHz ARM
core, I probably want to just use a commodity PC motherboard. Chances are, it
won't cost much more, and it comes with the huge advantage that I already know
how to develop for it.

~~~
ladyada
It is also a total PITA to get 'booted' since it comes blank you need to mkfs
a sd card. if you have linux on a computer already, this is pretty easy. but
what if you dont have a linux machine ready to go? if you're me you spend 2
days trying to maneuver something, giving up and borrowing a laptop. I've had
an easier time getting freebsd onto a Mac SE/30!

In the end what i really wanted to do is use the S-Video port on the BB and
after much googling, determined that there was no driver, no easy way to do it
and i was basically SOL especially without onboard ethernet/wifi.

The BB is a great embedded SBC, it completely slaughters the (hopefully now
completely dead) PC104 but right now I'm tinkering with a Chumby: Its not
nearly as powerful but for $110 you get a full retail package, LCD, composite
video out, speaker, wifi, & power adapter. In 2 seconds i was ssh'ed in and
porting SDL-based graphical apps with ease.

~~~
joezydeco
Do you think the lack of drivers and external support for things like the
SVideo is a TI deficiency, or a linux community problem in general?

I'm trying to decide between i.MX51 and OMAP3/AM37 for an upcoming project and
it seems like the level of support from TI or Freescale is going to be the
only thing making a difference in the decision...the chips are just too
similar in functionality.

~~~
ladyada
im like the last person you should ask about embedded linux. ive done a
smattering of projects but nothing detailed enough to advise :)

that said, i think the svideo thing is a 50/50 linuxwiki/TI problem. on one
hand, the linux community loves to say "oh you know, just recompile the
kernel" and on the other hand, TI should have made a completely ready-to-go
bootimage one could download that demos -everything- on the board.

~~~
joezydeco
True, it would be nice if the SDK was complete on first silicon. But that
never seems to be the case. And if there _is_ code to demo a feature, it's
probably a hack.

