“Most people hate the Arduino because it is so easy to use.”
I, and most people will disagree.

Most people love the arduino becuase it is so easy to use!

It is a great tool and will bring microcontrollers to the masses and get more people interested and involved.

Thanks for the link to the blog page though, I had not seen that one…

Mowcius

I’ve been trying to get the started kit for the past few months, but it’s on back order. Guess everybody want’s a piece of that bad boy.

I think that “most people hate the Arduino” because it is used very often in a “finished” version of a project. Part of the fun of hacking is creating custom PCBs after getting past the prototyping step.
I’m probably going to get an Arduino myself because it is nice for prototyping. Just stick some jumper wires in the female headers, hook them up to your breadboard and you’re done. The female headers are the only thing that really annoy me as well though. I would have prefered a version where you have each port of the µC as a group of 8 (or 10 with GND and VCC) female headers.

“Most people hate the Arduino because it is so easy to use.”

I’ve never seen any poster say “Damn that Arduino! It’s too easy to use!” The Parallax Basic Stamp line has been around a lot longer and is at least as easy to program. Most of the complaints I’ve seen have concerned the shameless pimping of that particular product line on hackaday.com. The chip snobbery argument is a straw man.

Arduino is my entry into the world of micro controllers. It’s cheap and easy to work with. If it wasn’t for hackaday I would still think I could never get involved with this kinda stuff because it was too complex.

All the haters should do some ‘real’ hacks if they don’t like the arduino stuff – instead of complaining.

“But I suspect that are a lot of folks who hack like they play LEGO; You do one project, love it for a while, then cannibalize it for your next build.”

I think this is very accurate. At least from my own experience as a beginner. Many of the projects are just testing and experimenting; I don’t want to solder all blinking LED projects and sine wave sound generators.

One can just store the sketches in Fritzing or similar to keep a database of projects. In the future I may have something _worth_ building separately and will order specific parts for it. But for learning and experiments you really only need one Arduino and it is cheap in fun.

For those in the UK looking for Arduino stuff, check out here:

http://oomlout.co.uk/

That’s where I’ll be buying mine from.

@randomguy I have 3 arduinos and use them while prototyping a project. For durability, I try to make a pcb at the end and use an Atmega chip with the arduino bootloader so the code is compatible. Some projects aren’t made permanent and it’s a little sad to dismantle the arduino when I’m done. For many friends, they don’t have the skills to design their own circuits so the arduino allows them to communicate an idea without hiring engineering help. (sorry for not being that cohesive. Also still NYE woozy)

“As I’ve previously said Arduino is a side effect of what happens when artists, yuppies and other useless people take an interest in something.”

And some wonder why those of us who like the Arduino refer to those who don’t as elitist.

“While I thinks it’s awesome that everyone can dive into projects easily by using this controller, it’s not out of line to suggest that they learn how it works, and understand the concepts they’re implementing to accomplish a task.”

Which is exactly what many of us do. Arduino provides the foot in the door that makes electronics accessible. Dismissing every Arduino user out of hand is making a sweeping generalization that none of us does any learning.

p.s.
By the previously mentioned “this toy”, I mean microcontrollers in general. I’ve settled into mostly breadboard and AVR Studio lately rather than just Arduino since it’s so much more versatile that way, and for relatively little coin. But that still takes more $$ than Arduino, and for folks just breaking into it I still recommend that as a good way to get your feet wet.

In fact, the other day my neighbor decided he wanted to get into it and asked me for advice. I was strongly considering steering him down the AVR Studio/programmer route and giving him enough extra components to keep him busy for a couple years. But after careful consideration, I ended up steering him down the Arduino route. It’s simply much less complex and intimidating to a newcomer. Almost effortless really. And the wealth of knowledge and examples to provide some instant gratification to spur on further growth was a big factor too. If he gets through some things and wants to know another way, then I can show another option or two.

Making things too difficult is good for scaring the ignorant away. If that’s your goal I guess you can do that. But if you want to raise the collective enlightenment, a sprinkle of sugar now & then is effective for holding the interest of new learners.

Mmmmmm….. cookies.

donpablo has hit the nail on the head. The best comment I have read on here to date. Good work mate.

It always surprise me to hear how easy Aduino is, and how freaking overrated this statement is. I don’t remember having much trouble when I first start in 9 grade HS, first I bought Basic Stamp in RatShack, at home after opening the box I thought to myself ORL 80$ for so little stuff, so I went back and return it, after couple hours googling I had PIC samples already shipped out, and simple programmer made from old VCR, and I didn’t know anything about electronics, just follow the schematics on picture and google how to recognize components values. Then after some more googling and trip to Barnes&Noble and RatShack with help of book first blinking led was assembled in hour or two, then binary counter and that how it begins.. If a kid can figure this out, how can this be any hard?

So for me all Arduino did is spam HaD and turn it into dumpster

This “hard” vs “easy” argument reminds me of amateur radio operators arguing about whether to drop the requirement to learn Morse code. Some felt that by keeping the requirement it made it more difficult to get a license and kept all but the most determined from joining the club. Now that ham radio is dying they have dropped the requirement.
The benefit of the Arduino is not the hardware, it is is minimal and could be easily duplicated. The benefit is the software. Because it is free and easy to use it removes one of the hassles of getting a project going. Sure, you code in assembly language and make smaller and faster programs but it’s 10 times the work. Mostly you just want the microcontroller doing the controlling. So in the future you should judge Hack A Day project not by the microcontroller running the project but by the rest of the project connected to the microcontroller.

Hmmm.
I’ve written programs in BASIC on an Apple 2. I’ve written them for the BASIC Stamp.

And I’ve done stuff for the Arduino.

Of the three, the Arduino is easier. Oh and the software for the thing is all Open Source. And it even builds on Windows without so much as a ***BLEEP!!** of an upset.

Go figure.

wow, trying to set an early and high standard for reply count are we?

I’m not quite sure why people feel the need to advertise the fact they are learning something like this.

I thought the whole point of hacking (or at least for me) was just having an idea pop into your head and going out to figure out how to make it work – not learning how to ‘do’ microcontrollers then hunting around for something to do with them.

I’m been tinkering with electronics and microcontrollers for a 20+ years now.

I’ve done analog stuff with op-amps and 555s at first, then logic stuff with 74LS, CMOS4000. Then I discovered 8051 (8032 with external EPROM), programming in assembly, then in C. Then discovered the PIC 16F84, which was a revolution at the time, then some more advanced PICs.

Then I started using the Zilog eZ8 Encore! MCU, which has a nice ICD (in-circuit debugger) and free C compiler. I’ve designed and sold commercial products with this MCU.

Recently I started doing stuff with the Parallax Propeller. I have also an STM32 Primer2 (ARM Cortex dev kit) lying around, waiting for a project to do with it.

My point is it doesn’t really matter which MCU or hardware platform you choose. Just choose one that suit your needs, and keep an open mind. If I were new to microcontrollers, I would probably give the Arduino a try.

If it helps people get started with microcontrollers, then its probably a good thing, as long as it doesn’t turn into fanboyism.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire

For me when making a project step 1 is getting it to work, step 2 is refine. Arduino’s get a lot more people to step 1 then there was before.

I’m working on a 1-wire project that will probably start out on a PC and then probably move to a smaller, possibly embedded platform. Step 1 will get the thing wired up and feeding me data, step 2 will be after I’ve tweaked the algorithms and am sure the results are relatively stable.

I don’t know if the project will ever go arduino, but it’s a contender based on how accessible the tools are. Honestly for most applications I can whip up something 10x the power and flexibility of an embedded microcontroller for less than $100 ( OpenWRT ) and for $129 I can get a chumby with video and a touchscreen input on top of a full linux computer. Will it be the most elegant solution, no, will it work, yes.

I agree that the arduino makes the uC work ridiculously simple. It’s feels like using the AVR without actually knowing who it works.
Then again when seeing all the resentment about it, I wonder what ever happen to KISS approach of engineering?

The arduino makes things simple. It’s basic and there for easy, and yes also limited.

Personally I like the idea behind it, making technology appreciably for the general public rather than a bunch of well educated engineers. Beginners can use it as is, to get a fast starting point, while experts can used the available libraries and bootloader and modified it to suit their needs. Starting with the arduino as a quick prop of concept, then diving into the code libraries, open the datasheet and start doing some real embedded work.

From hackaday.com: “Most people hate the Arduino because it is so easy to use.”

From Sean: “As a computer engineer, I love the arduino too. I’ve done a number of project with atmega ucs before, and development devolves into tedium extremely quickly without quality libraries.

Without the arduino, simple things like a serial connection take hours of fiddling with examples to get working.”

It’s not ease of use that’s the problem. In fact, I love it when I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. The problem is the masses that use it.

I spent time in college learning about EE and Computer Engineering, and I’ve been doing design work on and off for about 20 years. The Arduino platform opens up embedded computing technology to anyone that wants to spend the time to tinker with it, and those same people are flooding our online forums with questions about problems that can be found in any basic electrical engineering text. The signal to noise ratio in the engineering forums online has risen to a level where it’s getting very hard to get answers to the hard questions, in my opinion.

I’m reminded of when AOL came online and flooded the intertubes with the uneducated masses. Much of what was good about the net at that time was ruined. The only good thing I can say about it is that the Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, so it’s at least somewhat better for everyone. Without the web, the internet would truly be useless and abandoned.

my Arduino flies!

The arduino is the “basic stamp” of dev boards.

Well written article and great website. Very informative. Keep up the good work!

I want to buy the ADRUINO starter kit to get involved with avr microcontrollers.I would be happy if someone could help me with these questions:is it good for novice people? ,is it using c language ?,is there any examples of c programming included in the kit?is there any sample projects included in the kit?
Thank you very much for you all