To those who are saying "just get a RPi", this has been launched as part of the Arduino Pro line so the main target market is industrial applications where this type of flexibility might be needed.
Having said that, even as a hobbyist, I don't see what's wrong with it? Maybe I have written some code that is already running on my Arduino, and I want to add a sensor that is only available for RPi, without having to hop onto another platform... nothing wrong with that.
This isn't your arduno. Having some code running an a regular arduino board doesn't mean that it'll be anything but a massive pain to get it running on this thing.
It's an i.mx8 SoC running a shitty linux distro put together by Arduino LLC. The additional MCU is an STM32. This thing is expensive as fuck while being slower than a pi and forcing you to go through the SoC to get any access to the MCU at all.
Arduino don't seem to know what they're doing anymore. They flirted with proprietary altera FPGAs that required quartus when icestorm for the ICE40 has already been a thing for a long time. Now they're trying to go after raspi industrial sales with a slower, shittier i.mx8 chip on a board that's also closed-source. Honestly, the only reason I think they were able to pull off using an i.mx8 is because of the large number of hobbyist designs with that chip they can lean on.
I agree. This is a useful prototyping tool. Arduino’s pro line is actually not bad in this regard, and this seems to be a meaningful improvement.
When I’m throwing stuff together, I want stuff to “just work”. Merging ecosystems in this way is an asset, even if only occasionally useful or in edge cases. This is the sort of thing that prevents blockers and slow-downs by increasing available options on your platform.
> Having said that, even as a hobbyist, I don't see what's wrong with it? Maybe I have written some code that is already running on my Arduino, and I want to add a sensor that is only available for RPi, without having to hop onto another platform... nothing wrong with that.
...use a piece of wire ? None of the interfaces are fast enough to need a breakout board.
It's not "all arduino to rPi hats" adapters either (which would be far more useful tbh), it's "that special expensive ARM stick from arduino to rPi hats".
I don't understand the relationship to the Portenta, which I also don't see the point of.
I looked up the Portenta:
"The groundbreaking Portenta X8 is a powerful, industrial-grade System On Module (SOM) with Linux® OS preloaded onboard"
So... essentially an RPi?
So this thing says, "Accepting any Portenta board, but primarily designed for the Portenta X8, this carrier adds Raspberry Pi HAT support."
So you take an Arduino, put the Portenta on top of it, and then you can put an RPi HAT on top of that? This seems ridiculous and antithetical tidy little self-contained computing devices.
"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."
Then why was the Reply button enabled? How many times do we have to ask this?
This isn't "an arduino." It's merely made by Arduino.
This thing is an i.mx8 SoC running some shitty arduino distro, combined with an STM32. It has nothing in common with the arduino boards most people typically use.
Having said that, even as a hobbyist, I don't see what's wrong with it? Maybe I have written some code that is already running on my Arduino, and I want to add a sensor that is only available for RPi, without having to hop onto another platform... nothing wrong with that.