The Arduino YUN. YUN Means Cloud.

For the longest time, the creators of the Arduino have been looking at how to bring the Arduino platform into the cloud. Ethernet and WiFi shields technically work, but if you’re processing data scraped from a web page, a lowly microcontroller really isn’t the best option. Enter the Arduino YUN. At its core, it’s a regular old Arduino Leonardo. Underneath that metal plate on the board? That’s an SoC running Linux.

Basically, the Linux side of the Yun is pretty similar to a WiFi router running OpenWRT. There’s a USB port for plugging in peripherals, native WiFi support (802.11n, even!), an Ethernet connector, and enough RAM to do all the interesting stuff a small computer connected to the Internet can do.

To make all this web programming easier for Arduino neophytes, the YUN also includes a ‘bridge’ library that automates HTTP transactions between the Linux and microcontroller sides of the YUN. There’s also support for Temboo, an SDK for dozens of APIs that interact with Facebook, Dropbox, FedEx, and hundreds of other web services.

Below you can check out [Massimo] and [David] showing off their wares and going over how the YUN connects to the Internet and interacts with the microcontroller over the ‘bridge’. It’s an interesting device, and something we’ll surely check out at the World Maker Faire.

95 thoughts on “The Arduino YUN. YUN Means Cloud.

    1. It’s really no different from the kinds of things that go on all the time inside of IBM mainframes and Intel CPU chips. They both have lots and lots of legacy baggage bolted on, that by any right should have been dumped long ago, but they keep it because people can run their old software.

    2. What a surprise that this is the first comment. There’s an old guard that seems to really hate Arduinos of any form because goshdarnit they had to learn to program in assembler and you young kids don’t know how good you have it yadda yadda yadda.

      It’s a tool that serves a specific purpose (teaching artists and designers the basics of code, giving the keen ones a jumping-off point and those who are less talented an immediate sense of gratification). If you can’t recognize that, and keep judging these things from the standpoint of a bitter embedded systems engineer with his UV lamp and EPROMS, you’re doing the entire homebrew/hacker/maker/DIY community a disservice.

      1. The arduino is one of the main gotos If an engineer needs to hack a project together – whether a student or a guru at a big engineering company.

        It’s not just for the diy/art community

      2. Or, or maybe. . .it’s that some people (myself included) feel that the Arduino ends up pigeonholing people.

        I guess I’m of the opinion that it’s always better to get a solid understanding of something before you just jump right into the “fun” stuff. I see projects on here, and elsewhere, all the time that could be accomplished with a simple 555 or something like that. For one thing, it’s kind of absurd to see the waste in terms of money. But more importantly, I think it stunts learning. Arduino-users seem to often have little understanding of how electronics work, which is fine if you want to use pre-made things, but the moment you need something which hasn’t been made for you, you’re out of luck. That, and it is frustrating to see people misunderstand what a development board is for. As prototyping device, the Arduino is great. However, I don’t understand why people talk about “arduino-based” devices. No, it’s not “arduino-based,” it’s AVR-based. That’s like calling the iPhone “Acorn Archimedes based” because they both use ARM processors. Arduino boards are not meant, or at least shouldn’t be used in finished projects.

        1. Listen to what you’re saying, man.

          “It’s better to get a solid understanding of something before you jump right into the “fun” stuff.” People aren’t supposed to start out having fun with electronics? The only “right” way to learn about microcontrollers is by starting with discrete logic chips and timers? Do you realize the number of people that would just give up if you threw them a book on basic analog components and circuits and said “go through that, then when you’re done we’ll give you the Arduino?” Forget about it. Don’t underestimate the educational value of instant gratification.

          “For one thing, it’s a waste of money.” Why is this a concern to you? It’s not your money they’re spending. Let people spend their money how they want. Besides, $30 is extraordinarily reasonable compared to the cost of an EEPROM burner and development kit just ten years ago.

          “That, and it is frustrating to see people misunderstand what a development board is for.” “Arduino boards are not meant, or at least shouldn’t be used in finished projects.” Perhaps you’re not seeing one of the major advantages of the platform — it’s completely standalone. Do you expect new electronics hobbyists to have to learn to etch PCBs to build their projects? Maybe *you* don’t want to stick a development board into your project because you know there are more efficient ways, but beginners don’t care about that — and if the occasional keen one does, they can always pluck the burned chip out of the board and go from there.

          “Arduino-users seem to often have little understanding of how electronics work, which is fine if you want to use pre-made things, but the moment you need something which hasn’t been made for you, you’re out of luck.” “I think it stunts learning.” I don’t. I see your perspective, that people won’t get an education on basic analog electronics and as a result won’t be able to roll their own stuff down the line. It’s a valid concern — for someone who is going to get to that level. I would estimate that less than 5% of the people who are interested in arduinos will ever get to a level where they have to be doing that. There isn’t much reason to overload people with stuff that “might be useful when you start rolling your own sensors” or whatever when >95% of them will never reach that point, and it’s highly likely to turn them off of electronics entirely. Or is that your goal?

          “However, I don’t understand why people talk about “arduino-based” devices. No, it’s not “arduino-based,” it’s AVR-based.” This is just nit-picking.

          I learned electronics the way you seem to recommend, turning things on and off with RC circuits and transistors, moving up to 555s and 7400s, then to PICs and so on. And I while I’m glad to have that experience, I wouldn’t start anyone out with that unless they were aiming to be an electronics engineer. The average joe who saw a set of color-changing bike lights at the Maker Faire and wants to build something like that? Of course an Arduino is the best option for them. They want to mess around and get results that make them happy, not get a job at Intel.

          If all of that was tl;dr for you — Arduinos are educational tools meant to get people going with electronics immediately, and they serve that purpose extraordinarily well. For the average person it’s better than any other option, in fact. Turns out that people use arduinos effectively in all kinds of homebuilt projects and don’t suffer any ill effects from the experience. What’s your problem with that?

          1. @m
            Did you actually listen to what he’s saying? think about what you’re saying!
            “Do you realize the number of people that would just give up if you threw them a book on basic analog components and circuits and said “go through that”

            “$30 is extraordinarily reasonable compared to the cost of an EEPROM burner and development kit just ten years ago.” -apples and oranges there, how much are the EEPROM chips after you bought the burner?

            “Perhaps you’re not seeing one of the major advantages of the platform — it’s completely standalone. Do you expect new electronics hobbyists to have to learn to etch PCBs to build their projects? Maybe *you* don’t want to stick a development board into your project because you know there are more efficient ways, but beginners don’t care about that — and if the occasional keen one does, they can always pluck the burned chip out of the board and go from there.” -that’s only true of the older boards, the new boards with the surface mounted chips aren’t going to see anyone pluck the chip from the board.

            “I learned electronics the way you seem to recommend, turning things on and off with RC circuits and transistors, moving up to 555s and 7400s, then to PICs and so on. And I while I’m glad to have that experience, I wouldn’t start anyone out with that unless they were aiming to be an electronics engineer. The average joe who saw a set of color-changing bike lights at the Maker Faire and wants to build something like that? Of course an Arduino is the best option for them. They want to mess around and get results that make them happy, not get a job at Intel.”

            You’re just confirming the stereo type that people use Arduino because they are too lazy to learn how to do anything from basic principals, that if faced with more of a challenge than copying and pasting code they’d all give up.

            I am sitting on the fence with this one, I completely see the point of an Arduino, as a tool for artists and people who don’t want to learn principals but just have a quick win for the coloured light changing or flashing that they need in their project.
            But at the same time I question whether the copy paste attitude to learning systems is best at all?

            Don’t you realise that you learned more than just how to set the time base of the 555, you learned about RC networks, capacitor charge and disharge times, you learned how to make a basic filter.
            If you miss out on the basics, it’s not just that you don’t know how to work 555 or TTL logic, it’s more that you miss out on the knowledge of how to clean up a noisy signal before it gets into your chip, then you start trying to fix noise in code when what you really need is a capacitor/resistor/inductor. -but if you’ve never been told the basics you’ll never learn the basics, yuo’ll jump through hoops write buggy code, find it hard and eventually give up. all for the sake of a few pence resistor and cap network – sure and a few days actually learning what it does.

            On the other hand you make the excellent point that wanting to feed your cats whilst on holiday/automatically tweet when you shit/flash lights in a coffee table/make a diorhama that moves and lights up etc are not projects that will necessarily require the use of those fundamental things, and if you’ve no intentions of becoming an engineer working at NASA then why do you need any more than an Arduino? the only trouble is, that all these reasons keep confirming the arduino as a play thing rather than a serious tool.
            the problem is that it could (and should) be so much more. -the best example of this is probably the control systems for most home 3d printers.

            A couple of years ago I made an egg incubator, I used a thermistor, 3 resistors, 1 pot and a 741, I could have done it with an arduino or a PIC chip, but that’s have been pretty over kill and actually a lot more work! -so sometimes that simple/old/analoge way is the best way, and trying to use these new “easy” tools actually makes things more difficult.

            Like I say, I see both sides of the fence, and I get frustrated at both arguments,
            Firstly the argument that Arduino makes a bad learning tool is false, it’s a great introduction to programming and simple input/output control
            Secondly the argument that it’s only for artsy folk or the terminally lazy and or thick is completely false, it can be, (and in a lot of cases is) worth more.
            On the other hand you’re right… I can’t really see an arduino based project ever making it to anything more serious it’s not going to be found inside commercial products.
            I question the use of the arduino as a prototyping tool, as (personally) I’d find it just as easy to write code in C to be programmed direct to an AVR or PIC chip and I’d find it to write C style code for the arduino to be loaded onto an AVR chip. -sure it’s a good prototyping tool, but it starts to force the selection of parts in a way that is not good product selection, (I.e chosing AVR chips because you like them rather than choosing from all programmable controllers on the basis of features and functions.)

        2. Oh come on, i don’t have an engineering degree. The only way I’m going to have any time developing my other hobbies while tinkering with electronics is to use a board like an arduino. No i don’t want to program in C, no it don’t want to manually bitshift. What i want is results and then i don’t really care if it’s a development board or a chip doing it.

          It’s true that if my aspiration was to delve deep into how things work an arduino may or may not be the best choice. But for the hobbyist? There’s probably not a better tool.

          I’ve taken several arduino projects, pulled the chips off the board and plopped it into perf with a few crystals and capacitors. There, it’s the exact same thing, it just doesn’t say arduino. Now it says atmega328 – hooray :)

        3. As an EE dropout, with an interest in electronics, it’s only when I was introduced to Arduino that I got back into electronics as a hobby. I’ve joked with friends that stuck with the degree, that if they’d given us an Arduino in first year, perhaps I wouldn’t have dropped out! In the end though, although I’ve been watching and bookmarking amateur/hobby electronics projects, it’s only now that I have an Arduino, that I’m doing projects of my own. While there are a ton of shields available that you can use without having to learn basic electronics, it also shows users that you can make your own boards fairly easily and which ICs etc work well with the Atmel Micro.

          In first year circuits they taught us about voltage dividers on paper, but I only fully understood the concpet once I’d built one myself in one of my first Arduino Project. In that sense, it’s a great tool for showing basic electronic circuits in an interactive way.
          If you plan on becoming an Engineer or something along those lines, then yeah, it makes sense to learn all about analog and digital circuits first, but as a teaching tool and for the hobbyist, artists, designer, etc. it’s probably the best tool out there in terms of ease of use and simplicity.

          Finally, Arduinos aren’t that cheap compared to the Atmel ICs they use, so if you’re like me and want to do a lot of different projects, you’ll be researching how to build an Arduino on breadboard or shrinking it down onto an Atiny pretty quickly.

          1. Agree,
            I felt sad for my EEE path friend who in his 3rd year was beginning to learn about diodes, (on paper) while I was having “hands on” with them in the first month of earning an Associate’s Degree in Electronics. Yes, he probably ended up getting a far better paycheck than me in the long run, but I think his learning would have been much more effective and “real world” if his curriculum had “hands on” Lab classes from the start.
            (thirty five years ago)

          2. Sadly I can’t agree with either of you.

            My path in electronics was started by taking things appart as a child and reading books and learning about electronics, then the 120 in 1 tandy project kit (with the little spring terminals) -that you can still buy today.
            then I (in the uk) did GCSE electronics, then A level electronics and finally a degree in electronic engineering, in total that was 7 years of learning, all courses were a mixture of theory and practical. I completely understand how you can be sitting in a class learning about activation energy and such and think “man this is boring” or, “I don’t understand this without a diode circuit.”

            it is boring, in depth theory will always be boring, but it’s that boring theory that is useful later in life when you need to pick the best components for a job, or understand a complex issue. saving diodes until year 3 is a bit weird, given that you need to know about silicon doping etc to be able to study chip design etc. (something we did in our VLSI modules) you also need to have some diode theory to understand, well diodes, transistors fets, amplifiers, timers radio equipment… just about everything… -perhaps he just studied a poor course??

            if your problem is that you can’t understand without reference to a circuit then it’s your own fault that you couldn’t be bothered to spend that 5p on a diode and make a small circuit for yourself.

            If you dropped out it’s not because the course was inaccessible it’s because you couldn’t be bothered to do any work outside of class to actually progress yourself.

            are you saying that you’d have magically been bothered to get a power supply, bread board, diodes, resistors capacitor, learn a coding language AND buy an arduino when you couldn’t be bothered to get a breadboard and a few diodes when you were actually paying to study electronics?

          3. It’s funny how every one of you is basically proving my point. “Learning how electronics work is BORING.”

            Also, you don’t have to be an EE to hnderstand basic electronics.

        4. Please stop driving your car and certainly do not EVER try to change your oil until you have an intimate understanding of the internal combustion engine. People who simply want to get where they are going without being able to design an automobile from scratch are just too lazy. You really need to start by designing a simple two stroke engine, and then move on to the more complicated four strokes, once you fully understand the combustion dynamics that are happening in the cylinder..

          1. You don’t need complex understanding of the valve train of a 4 stroke engine in order to drive, but I think you’ll find that a little bit of knowledge will help an aweful lot when you;re stuck at the side of the road. (besides ni the UK driving test they do actually ask you questions like, so me the oil filler, show me how you check oil levels, show me where screen wash goes -the kind of basics that you need to use your car every day on the road)

            knowing what a diode or resistor does and comparing them to a car would be expecting you to know that petrol burns.

            a lot of the time you’re talking real fundamental basics that people are not having knowledge of (or interest in) but even so they want to build an LED cube…

            as for not driving at all, another good analogy. oftentimes using an arduino in a project is like using a 52 seat coach to drive to your neighbours 10 yards away.

        5. I have been thinking a lot about this so I could craft a measured, and I hope helpful response.

          I understand where you are coming from, and your analogies are more or less correct, if rather hyperbolic. But here is the question: why does it matter.

          Sure you could use a 555 to do project X and cost under $5, or you could spend $50 and do it with an arduino. These numbers are completely made up, but I feel like they are in line with an argument you might make. Please correct me if I am wrong.

          But if all I want to do is a cool thing, why does it matter how I solved the problem? If I can afford the rather small (in the grand scheme of things) cost different, why does it matter?

          If you are making a product and trying to save a lot of money on every unit sure, but for hobbyist project it really doesn’t matter. Why should I have to eat my meat before I get my pudding? This is supposed to be fun, I don’t have to do a homework assignment first.

          And once I have that arduino, then I have a platform to do a lot more and varied things than that 555.

          Again if this is supposed to be fun, then you are telling people they are having fun the wrong way. They aren’t bothering you, they aren’t making life hard on anyone else. And once they get their foot in the door they might well go and learn it the “right” way.

          Let them have their fun…

        6. Arduino was never intended for people who had an interest in microcontrollers or embedded systems engineering. It was never meant as a tool to teach electronics. That it was adopted by engineers looking to scratch together a quick solution doesn’t negate the main purpose of an Arduino.

          Here’s the thing about Arduino. It’s based on Processing and lacks many bells and whistles of a proper IDE. The language is simplified, a lot of details are taken care of for you, and there’s an ocean of code examples available on the Arduino website. Even code files are called “sketches”. Do you understand why this is?

          It’s because Arduino has always been aimed squarely at designers and hobbyists.

          You might find this hard to understand, but there are people in the world who neither particularly care about how microcontrollers work, nor wish to learn it to the extent an engineer would. What they’re looking for is a simple platform to make their ideas happen. Without the Arduino, there are a lot of really neat project that would never have happened.

          If using an Arduino instead of learning microcontrollers pigeonholes people, then we’re all pigeonholed in some way or another. If you can’t sketch, build models, or understand aesthetics like a designer, you’ve pigeonholed yourself. If you don’t understand dynamics or kinematics like a mechanical engineer does, you’re pigeonholing yourself. If you don’t understand physiology and organic chemistry like a pharmacologist does, you’re pigeonholing yourself. If you don’t understand trauma care and first aid like a paramedic does, you’re pigeonholing yourself.

        7. Love all the opinions but spending too much time replying wouldn’t be worth it.
          That said, Arduino is fun but not for the fully faint-of-hearted when it comes to electronics. I know artists and such looking for electronics integration and they’re willing to spend much more for the LilBits kits even though imho it’s much less rigorous at the basic level than an Arduino and way more expensive. Really at the end of the day it’s a tool like so many others and having a multitude of tool options is a great thing. You get to pick what you like and others will get ultimately what they need. Personally though I love the Arduino as it can fit the Artist’s needs as well as introductory EE class. Enjoy life and find the right tools!

          1. Easier to downshift logic levels than upshift.
            And a 5v microcontroller can easily handle recieving 3.3v signals, a 3.3v microcontroller would be damaged by a incoming 5v signal.

            Ease of use, which is why the Arduino platform is so prevalent

  1. It really doesn’t make sense why they didn’t go for a Due compatible CPU and a much simpler WiFi card. I’m waiting on a DigiX myself, which does just that and is cheaper to boot.

        1. Just a couple weeks ago Adafruit merged several patches I submitted to their CC3000 library. That doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in all things CC3000 related, but I think it does demonstrate I know a thing or two about that Wifi module….

          While the CC3000 is nice, in that it handles a lot of the lower level protocol stuff, you still only get byte-streaming level service, similar to the Wiznet chip used on Arduino’s Ethernet board.

          You don’t get HTML parsing and higher level “web 2.0” protocol stuff like Yun provides on the Linux side. If you want to interact with modern web-based services, you still need to receive and parse large amounts of data, much more than can easily fit into an Arduino’s tiny RAM at once (necessitating more difficult programming) and you have to compose output too. Sure, there are lots of things that can be done this way. But integrating multiple services and scaling to more substantial things than sending a 1-line email or twitter message quickly outgrows Arduino’s capability.

          Perhaps you should look at the Yun? Or just sit back and watch as lots of awesome projects appear. But don’t fool yourself into thinking a “simple” module, even the CC3000, can easily do all that. With enough intense programming effort, perhaps even on a tiny AVR chip, it might. But the real value of the Yun is what it will make easy for people to do.

          1. Where we seem to disagree is in the need for the Web 2.0 stuff on an Arduino. WiFi yes. Web services? A waste of time IMHO. Once you have the TCP/IP stack in place (which the CC3000 does for you) then it’s pretty trivial to run a web server (there’s even code to do that on an Uno).
            The DigiX still looks to me to be the far more capable and rounded device, while being cheaper and still Arduino compatible. See http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digistump/digix-the-ultimate-arduino-compatible-board-with-w

      1. I’m not a fan of the Raspberry Pi, but this is getting absolutely absurd. Suprise! The usefulness of a device is not measure by how fast the processor is, or what kind of games you can play on it, or how many LEDs you can blink. How many years have people been saying the 8-bit microcontroller is dying? I’m still waiting. . .

        Sometimes, more is less. Even if you set aside price, dealing with added complexity can make programming the device much harder. Case in point, ignoring power consumption, which do you think would be easier to write assembly code for on bare metal: a new Intel Core i7, or an AVR? Sometimes lack of features is a feature in its own right.

        1. If you are trying to insinuate that writing assembly for the AVR is easier, you’re damn wrong. The Core i7 is x86 compatible, which means that the amount of tools and documentation to write assembly for it is just astounding, not to mention that it boots in 16-bit “real mode”: it emulates an ultra-fast i8086.

          Now, soldering it to the board… that’s another thing altogether.

        2. Wow, are people having fun today. I was just making the point that, it seems as if more and more add-on creators for the Arduino are inching it closer, and closer to the features of a Raspberry PI, and when choosing a platform to host a project with some servos, sensors, etc., the features of the Raspberry Pi offer more to the developer, with a simpler means (from an application’s developers perspective) than a beefed up arduino such as the YUN. Everybody’s experience is relative. Mine, as a non-EE person, is that the Pi is so easy to work with, because I can write driver code, or an application in Python, Java, C, C++, … without having to deal with interrupt processing, writing a file system handler, task schedulers, …and the list goes on. I am considering the Pi as a prototyping platform, but it is certainly cheap enough to leave in, and flexible enough to make it easy to work with in the field (SD card).
          If I had a ton of experience developing code for the Arduino, my perspective might be different, but that’s the beauty of perspective and opinion (I don’t care about everybody else’s as much as mine). I would like to understand why so many find the Arduino preferable as a prototyping platform over the RPi for complex projects (where you have to write multi-threaded software that does more than operate one servo, light up one set of LEDs, or capture data from one sensor).
          To illustrate my point, somebody point me at an implementation of a RESTful web server (not a program that takes RESTful requests, but a server that allows me to add my own services to it) for the Arduino. I would use the Arduino in a second (setting aside the cost difference of the more expensive Arduino with an Ethernet shield, SD card, …), but for some applications, it just doesn’t make sense.

    1. The RPi has a significantly more powerful CPU and an actual GPU, but no wifi. For an idea of the RPi’s power, think “crappy old Android phone”; for the Yun, “Linksys router with a bunch of GPIOs.” Very different target markets.

      1. Raspberry Pi also have GPIOs, lot of libraries, and High level stuff like a Java, Node.JS, webserwer, whatever you want.

        I get the idea of your post to tread down RPi, and praise up to the sky Ardiuno but there are clearly a better, consistent solutions for this kind of platform.

        This ardiuno looks like C64 with BlueRay Player to me.

    1. There is actually plenty of point to this for existing small projects. The manpower required to rewrite software is really expensive, and even worse is the problem of lining up the talent capable of doing it. With this device you can bypass all of that,

  2. I do have to say that this is a sort of odd combo, even without decending into arduino-directed rage. Seems like the SOC running linux probably has more left over power than the ATMega chip. I actually don’t get the point of this, to be honest.

      1. Haha, so it seems. I’m one of the old crusty guys who usually complains about them though. Well, young crusty guys anyhow. Rather than attempting flamewar I was just trying to figure out what the advantage of tacking on another chip on something already running linux was, though. Shield/code compatability is about the only thing I can come up with here… Are people that attached to their arduino?

  3. Something a lot of people here seem to overlook is that things that seem like an alternative, especially the Rpi, do lack analog inputs. That’s why you might need an additional Atmel chip on the Rpi’s ass for some projects. If you then add a Wifi dongle and consider either the price of the components or the effort necessary to set this all up, the price doesn’t as outrageous anymore.
    Another thing is the power envelope. That has killed the idea of throwing Rpis at some problems for me. We’ll see about the Yun here.

    That said, I also don’t really see the point of this. For practically all use cases I ever had there were better alternatives that were at least not more expensive and barely required any more effort. Unless I am missing something this seems kind of a half assed idea and a money grab through the Arduino label. But I’ll defer any definitive judgment until there’s more details, especially on the interfacing between the Linux and the Atmel and the power envelope.

    1. Thanks for posting that, it’s amazing the number of people who still don’t get the point of something like this. It’s not just analog. Also PWM, servos, frequency counting, pulse length measurement, a whole slew of (near) real-time tasks, etc.

      I’ve currently got a [Pogoplug] and a [PIC] working in tandem on my workbench, much like the YUN. Insert your favorite [X] and [Y].

      1. Yeah, having a dedicated microcontroller for real-time interfaced to a full Linux SoC is a pretty common design. You just can’t get true real time performance out of something that’s running a Linux software stack and most cheaper SoC’s lack PWM, input capture, ADC, etc. that microcontrollers have.

    2. I’m not particularly enthralled by this device [and not because I’ve never touched an Arduino]. But one thing that must be said is that Linux is not a real-time OS. So for anything constrained by timing requirements, the addition of a dedicated MCU is pretty valuable. At least this board has that integration going for it.

      Otherwise, my money would still be on Olimex’s olinuxino, with integrated [as an add-on] WiFi. Or jump into the ARM ecosystem, and throw a RedPine or CC3000-series solution on top.

      Also, any way you slice it, WiFi is power hungry…not going to be running an 802.11b/g/n energy harvesting device anytime soon.

    3. The price seems a bit high to me. The Beaglebone Black has more io and a faster GPU for a lower price. Maybe the Beaglebone developers should develop a 5v safe version of the Bone. Combine that with Linux, FreeRTOS, QNX, or RTEMS and a compilers for sketches and you would have a very interesting device for a lot of people. Frankly as it is the Beaglebone black rocks.
      As to the folks saying that they could do x with a 555. So what? With a cpu from the start you flexibility and an esay way to add new features and functions.

  4. TL-WR702N + MSP430 Launchpad + Energia = Poor mans version of this (less than the price of the Uno), and I bet power consumption would be very similar. If only there was enough interest to port the libraries…

  5. The lack of ADCs (analog inputs) on the Pi is a real factor, but a BeagleBone Black with a USB Wifi adaptor is significantly more powerful than the Yun, has more GPIO and ADCs, is more power efficient than the equivalent than the equivalent Pi setup.

    So why would you pick the Yun over the BeagleBone Black?

    – Greater Familiarity with the Arduino stack
    – The Yun is simpler
    – It is generally easier to use (especially considering the Temboo APIs)
    – Something I have forgotten to write hear

    Which are all (well 3 out of 4 at least) all very valid reasons. They don’t apply to me, or a lot of people who inhabit sites like this one though.

    Now I am familiar with the BeagleBone, Adafruit has a lovely Python Library (that is pretty easy to adapt to use in a C/C++ app), and it (+ Wifi) is nearly half the cost of the Yun on Adafruit.

    Now when the price drops to ~$45 or less, as it is bound to eventually, then that will change the overall calculus.

    Until that time I will continue to use the BeagleBone, but will recommend the Yun to my more arduino centered friends

  6. Honestly I think people are missing the point. This thing is designed to do two things.
    1) Be an Arduino Leonardo, with shields and simple code and I/O, Analogs, pwm, SPI, etc.
    2) Send the data to another place via networking either Ethernet or Wifi.
    This thing is likely meant to work with Cosim and other “Cloud Data” services. You write a spiffy little Arduino sketch, program it over, then call the bridge to shuttle it off.

    What I want to know is can I make a wifi bridge/client device that has a screen and interface that will let me scan for open AP points, pick one, connect, then bridge WiFi-Ethernet. Put a joystick button and 3 line character display on the Arduino side and use it to config the AR9331 side. /THAT/ would be slick to me.

  7. I like the idea of a nice all in one solution with linux ‘middleware’ as it were.. plenty of easily cooked receipes to be had. Price point would be very important to me tho.

    I currently do very similar the the mentioned here over and over many times 703N router with openwrt flashed. A solar powered mobile dropbox, wireless grbl controller for my cnc, remote relay activation are all projects I’ve accomplished with this router and various *duino boards.

    At ~$US22 for the router, plus $4-$30 for an arduino (cheap ebay knock-off vs. real), total cost is around $US50 (I prefer supporting arduino developers and buying original boards). If they can hit that or better it, I’m in.

    1. Not to mention the Flutter on kickstarter as well… based on the response to it and spark core… it appears there’s there is a pretty good market for such things no matter how you choose to implement it.

      1. Of course there is one very important difference between Spark Core and Flutter and the Yun… one of them is shipping now. Spark is supposed to be shipping in a couple of weeks, but we will have to see if that happens. As for Flutter, they may have reached funding, but the their campaign isn’t over yet so they really haven’t even started.

        But also these devices are in different categories from one another. Flutter is more like an Arduino Fio with XBee modules, or the RFDuino — ie non-wifi arduino compatible.

        Spark Core does do wifi, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the ram or processing power of the Yun. The Spark has 20K of RAM whereas the Yun’s linux module has 64M. So you are going to be even more reliant on the cloud for tasks.

        The point of the Yun is to have enough processing power and memory to do more resident in the device, store and process web pages, etc.

        Each of these devices has a use, and fits a different bubble on the venn diagram. One does not obviate the other

      2. It is worth mentioning it has been 8 months since the Flutter kickstarter ended, and you still can’t buy one. I continue to think Flutter is useful and cool, but the YUN has been available for most of the same time.

        I will take the thing I can get over the theoretically better (and that is debatable) thing I can’t

  8. Lame arguments against a decent board for putting just about any sensor on the network with little programming effort. Seriously, launching Python apps from code inside the 32U4? Holy crap does that make things simple.

    Why do I like it? Embedded sensor development for a robot at work, and something to track my mileage on an exercise machine in my home. Oh, how about having it actually control a video game while I ride my bike… Webserver to do statistics as well? Total overkill…right…

    Now you might want to spend a lot of time designing a board to do this kind of thing, but as an engineer I am paid for results. Not how much I know about designing circuit boards. Since I own my own robotics company results are king and I don’t get paid until I get them. If a tool from Arduino does the job great. If not I will find something simpler, faster, better. And yes, I am going to reach for an 8 pin micro rather than a 555 timer because I can do better timing and they are getting cheaper as I don’t need external components.

    P.S. Yeah, I am posting this because I feel a bit punchy…so what? ;) I just get tired of the whole: “this stuff sux” attitude of people. Wake up people. Life is awesome and SO ARE YOU!!!

Leave a Reply to Greg Warner (@gdw2)Cancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.