I have observed hobbyists innovating in really cool ways in all sorts of corners - musicians, athletes, retro computer collectors, etc
Very glad to see they're being well funded and can continue building
PS - I elect this as the greatest current Arduino contribution to humanity - The Furby Organ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLBjScgb7o
Nothing against the Arduino folks; they really opened up a great avenue for exploration. But it doesn't seem cost-competitive at the moment.
We should stick to standard Arduino code that should run on all compatible Arduino devices.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/adafruit-disc...
Why should the entire hobbyist hardware space be an Arduino monoculture?
IMO the Arduino proto-language and framework are quite mediocre and it's time to move on. For beginners, embedded hardware has gotten much more powerful and more familiar languages can be employed. For more advanced users and larger projects, using a real RTOS with a real task system unlocks development velocity in a huge way.
I don't really love CircuitPython, but I don't see how this is comparable to the Wiring/Arduino situation, nor do I really see it as a step backwards.
Arduino created the ecosystem, and while I agree it’s definitely a problematic way to approach things, I don’t really see a replacement for it in the C/C++ space currently. Using something like PlatformIO, which is almost objectively better from a developer perspective, is IMO not what I would consider a replacement. My hope is that eventually embedded Rust will have something beginner friendly like what Arduino offers but I don’t even see the nascent beginnings of something like that currently.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/04/20/new-guide-adafruit-esp3... "Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino."
You mean Vivado?
So many tv commercials can’t be wrong
This hardware unfortunately doesn't have either of that; it requires Intel Quartus for design and synthesis.
(In the past I've tried running the commercial products under WINE, like most people did at the time, and it worked but was definitely terrible.)
It’s been around for awhile now… more than a decade
Ok, so it came and went. A decade ago.
HDL, Logic Gates, State machines + custom startup code + blah blah blah --> became ???
GP is looking for "???" to materialize.
With that said, I'm learning FPGA's using TinyFPGA just to add it to my tool box.
There are hobbyist who wire up an LED, make it blink and get immense satisfaction out of that. There are also hobbyist who putter around with a scanning electron microscope in their shed, and everything in between.
There are hobbyist who learn the things you mention and more.
> Programming in HDL is fundamentally different from C++ or Python..
Ok? And cheese making is fundamentally different from radio astronomy. Yet there are hobbyist pursuing both.
> I just don't get the allure of fpgas from amateurs who don't need to use them for work.
Let me give you an example. One summer when i was younger I have found a Xilinx Spartan dev board in a dusty bin in our hackspace. Nobody around me did know anything about it, it was probably a donation originally. I spent about two weeks playing with that thing. The most advanced stuff I ever got working was some example code found on the internet which synthetised a pong game through a vga connector. It was generating the video signal through just turning its outputs on and off in the right patterns. That was total magic to me. I spent the time understanding every line of the code and modifying it to do different things. I was goofing off, learning about tech, and having a great time.
I’m not saying this is the only way to enjoy an FPGA, but it certainly illustrates that hobbyist can get value out of one.