Arduino Uno vs Beaglebone vs Raspberry Pi

[nedb]

http://digitaldiner.blogspot.fr/2012/10/...berry.html

Have fun

--Ned

[davidbrady]

Thanks Ned,

That's a great write up and it gets the juices going. I'm on the road right now w/o my linux arduino development environment. Can't wait to get home to start working on some of this stuff.

[DOSZORROS]

I am using Internet Explorer 8 and it will not open this site. I am doing what wrong?

[Arcticdude]

Don't know about 8, George. It opened without fuss on my iphone.

[nedb]

(03-28-2013 23:03)DOSZORROS Wrote:  I am using Internet Explorer 8 and it will not open this site. I am doing what wrong?

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them! I will try it on my IE setup when I get home tonight. I use the Chrome browser a lot, can you install it on you Windows machine? Might be useful for sites that IE won't open.

---

(03-28-2013 21:58)davidmbrady Wrote:  Can't wait to get home to start working on some of this stuff.

One of the follow-up comments to the article on digital diner:

"Well, I made a Segway clone with my Arduino UNO..."

[davidbrady]

Ned,

Great review of the three options. Each one certainly has its application. I'm still sold on the Arduino for our Sanduino! But, it's good to know about the BB and the rPi if we need some heavy duty processing power.

[Itchintogo]

Boy every time I read one of these threads I feel so out of touch. Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone sound like boxes of dog biscuits I would pick up at the Pet Food Store.

One day I will have to start from the beginning.

[nedb]

(03-29-2013 16:52)Itchintogo Wrote:  Boy every time I read one of these threads I feel so out of touch. Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone sound like boxes of dog biscuits I would pick up at the Pet Food Store.

One day I will have to start from the beginning.

Arduino comes with a kickstart collection of projects if you buy a kit. David mentioned Sparkfun in an earlier thread--they sell a kit with the accessories you need to read sensors, spin motors, and generally get with it, and right darned quick. Go to sparkfun.com and check it out.

Somethinbg you ought to know--the best, most gratifying way to way to learn programming is to take some code that is right (it will compile and run) and play with it. Change some stuff.

For example, the sparkfun kit gives you a bunch of LEDs and breadboard, and tells you literally and explicitly how to hook them up to Arduino. They give a few lines of code to make the LEDS blink in order. This is where the fun, and the practicality, begins. Spend the time to 'get' what the LED blink program is doing, then mess with it. If it says wait 2000 milliseconds, tell it to wait only 50 milliseconds. If it says start with LED#1, tell it instead to start with #5.

Code isn't intuitive if you read it like English, but if you look at it like plumbing, where you grab a piece of pipe and connect it to another, then code (and programming) are fairly accessible on the same level as other everyday things, things you do without much effort at all. Your list of errands to run in the car isn't much different from the steps you want the arduino to take to read a sensor, send voltage to a relay, and so on. You can build a robot without very many technical hurdles, once you get acquainted with connecting a motor to an arduino and controlling it. Absolute baby steps is all it takes, with a kit like sparkfun.

So spend $100 for a sparkfun inventor kit, do the little projects (you can even download the code instead of typing it in), and away you go!
Without skills beyond what we're talking about with the inventor kit, I am replicating the functions on a $500 furnace control circuit board. It is orphaned equipment (company went out of business a decade ago) with parts that are becoming more expensive and less common with every passing year. Fortunately, all the BS like thermostats and relays are just the meat and potatoes of an arduino. Get a relay shield for it ($40 FOR 4 RELAYS THAT PLUG RIGHT UP TO THE ARDUINO, WITH FREE CODE TO RUN THEM) and use code to describe when to turn it on, when to turn it off, when to turn on the pump, etc.

It is bone dead plain just as straigtht-forward as the most straight-forward thing you can imagine. The learning curve isn't very long. The 10 projects in the Sparkfun kit are each comparable to a coffee break worth of time and effort. Just do what it says, watch it work when you do it, and file it away in memory (you will remember it for the novelty) against the day when you want to do something useful (even blinking LEDSs have their place among novelties).

And then it is "Welcome to the club!". You won't get a Nobel prize for learning to use arduinos, but by the gods you will pull alongside the hotrod toys and apps of the eartly 21st century. It IS programming, you ought to let it under your skin, and you need to know what it is like to control one, if you want to really participate in using computers, social media, technology, or even getting a checkup at the doctor's office. HUGE things can be done with just the bare simple things a computer will do for a programmer.

Beware, using mciro controllers is a vice as well as a passion. Consume in moderation to see the virtue they bring within reach of anybody willing to relate to them.

Have fun! and go to sparkfun.com, they are a very good Arduino outlet.

--Ned

[Itchintogo]

Thanks Ned I will check it out! You make it sound as simple as Pi!