Martin Walton wrote:
> Not really a technical question, but I'm wondering if someone could 
> explain to me what all the fuss around Arduino is all about?

Arduino is an AVR board in a cheap format with some highish level tools 
nicely packaged. Nothing magic, but they paid attention to all the 
details to make something that's small without being too small, 
reasonably powerful, plug it in and it works, and so on. There's a 
higher level programming interface which works well and the whole thing 
is open source. It's through hole so you can duplicate it easily and at 
a super-low cost if you have the spare time.

We cooked up a cheap STM32 Cortex-M3 development board and bumped into 
the Arduino when we scanning about looking for the best physical format. 
It seems like a good choice and we tried to fit it into the Arduino 
spirit - easy to work with, easy to expand, flash downloader included, 
schematics available, plug it in and it just works, and so on.

We don't as yet have the high-level Arduino software. There's tons of 
stuff for ARMs in general and for the Cortex so it's up to the user to 
decide whether it meets his/her needs.

Martin Walton <"martinw at carallon dot com"> wrote:

> Tim wrote:
>> We have developed a board which has an ARM Cortex-M3 micro in the
>> Arduino format. This is definitely not an official board, and by using a
>> 72MHz 32-bit processor with 512KByte of Flash we guaranteed there would
>> be a few changes from the 10MHz Atmel ATmega168 in the Arduino... But we
>> tried to keep as close as possible to the Arduino spirit.
>> 
>> At least the connectors are in the same places and the functions on the
>> pins are the same, though there are many more options. More details and
>> pretty pictures at www.bugblat.com/products/cor.html
>> 
>> And I would be happy to answer any technical questions.
>> 
>> Tim
> 
> Not really a technical question, but I'm wondering if someone could
> explain to me what all the fuss around Arduino is all about?
> 
> I keep reading about this board in obscure corners of the
> (non-engineering) press, but I'm struggling to see whats so special
> about it.  Surely its just a cheap AVR dev board?  What makes it so
> special that it gets all this attention?  What do you mean by "the
> Arduino spirit"?  How is this any better that the $60 Luminary dev board
> I've been playing with?

It's the Open-ness thing.  The design is free so one can build ones own, or
repackage it.  There's a free IDE with a C++ compiler and simplified
libraries for creating firmware.  People are meant to create applications,
extensions, peripherals, etc. and share them with the wider community.  As
a toy and a teaching tool that makes it hugely attractive.

And it costs quite a bit less than $60.  Lately for my own prototyping I'm
using ET-TEAM's ATmega128 stamp board, which is even cheaper.  But it's
just me, the board and the datasheet (and AVRFreaks).  Not the Arduino
experience at all.

        Mel.
> 
> Confused
> 
> Martin

Martin Walton wrote:

> Not really a technical question, but I'm wondering if someone could 
> explain to me what all the fuss around Arduino is all about?
> 
> I keep reading about this board in obscure corners of the 
> (non-engineering) press, but I'm struggling to see whats so special 
> about it.  

I think one reason is that it is easy for non-programmers to use it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino

And maybe the press is more interested in writing about some Prix Ars
Electronica artists than writing about some more technical things.

-- 
Frank Buss, fb@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de

Tim wrote:
> We have developed a board which has an ARM Cortex-M3 micro in the 
> Arduino format. This is definitely not an official board, and by using a 
> 72MHz 32-bit processor with 512KByte of Flash we guaranteed there would 
> be a few changes from the 10MHz Atmel ATmega168 in the Arduino... But we 
> tried to keep as close as possible to the Arduino spirit.
> 
> At least the connectors are in the same places and the functions on the 
> pins are the same, though there are many more options. More details and 
> pretty pictures at www.bugblat.com/products/cor.html
> 
> And I would be happy to answer any technical questions.
> 
> Tim

Not really a technical question, but I'm wondering if someone could 
explain to me what all the fuss around Arduino is all about?

I keep reading about this board in obscure corners of the 
(non-engineering) press, but I'm struggling to see whats so special 
about it.  Surely its just a cheap AVR dev board?  What makes it so 
special that it gets all this attention?  What do you mean by "the 
Arduino spirit"?  How is this any better that the $60 Luminary dev board 
I've been playing with?

Confused

Martin

We have developed a board which has an ARM Cortex-M3 micro in the 
Arduino format. This is definitely not an official board, and by using a 
72MHz 32-bit processor with 512KByte of Flash we guaranteed there would 
be a few changes from the 10MHz Atmel ATmega168 in the Arduino... But we 
tried to keep as close as possible to the Arduino spirit.

At least the connectors are in the same places and the functions on the 
pins are the same, though there are many more options. More details and 
pretty pictures at www.bugblat.com/products/cor.html

And I would be happy to answer any technical questions.

Tim