Hacker News Reader

Comment by numlock86 | Hacker News Reader

The target audience is "industry/professional IoT". I guess this is mainly targeted at prototyping projects or hooking something existing up to the web with some "realtime" I/Os, giving people the opportunity to stick to 61131. Existing solutions that offer you BLE/WiFi in this sector are usually terrible and just branded routers with "industrial grade" components. This is probably not suited for or targeted at automating your next big high-runner molding machine or high-speed motion-controlled application, as you already figured out.

View on HN

I agree. It really helps to read the description and not just the title. I have been in industrial controls since 1980, so I'm I'm not so quick to dismiss the introduction of the next new thing. Ten years ago, when the Raspberry PI was introduced, I didn't expect to see it as the go to thin client for manufacturing floor HMIs. Yet, in some, very large and well funded plants, it is. Am I ready to put the Opta in mission critical control? No. Am I happy to see a more open option for IoT? Yes.

That's unfair - I read the description at length, and quite honestly, I still can't understand why i'd ever use it. It looks like buzzwords over real use-cases. The partner, Finder, is known for making these types of devices, and outside of the "Arduino" stamp, they've made a device that has been in-market (and relatievly unused) for half a decade already.

This will not be a real option for IOT.

For what they are trying to claim is the target, I'd either use a PLC, or to your point, i'd mount a raspberry pi or embedded arm device.

As you say, the raspberry PI i understand - people need something to drive HMI/etc that isn't the horrible mess that most automation providers provide.

They want something to just hook a camera up to and not worry about spending 2 years writing codesys drivers or whatever.

This is trying to tread a middle ground, but the middle ground has better options - industrial PI with builtin PLC support, for example (https://www.industrialshields.com/industrial-plc-raspberry-p...)

That's because Arduino is sort of the worst of both worlds - they are actually horrible at pretty horrible at WiFi. Bluetooth i haven't tried in a while but it was also really bad. They are okay at I/O, but nothing is guaranteed in a meaningful way.

So as an option for IoT, it sucks.

At a slightly higher level, NRF does a much better job of producing rock-solid devices and ecosystem that can do bluetooth/wifi well, and throw in I/O.

At a lower level, everything equally sucks at wifi/bluetooth as this thing.

> At a slightly higher level, NRF does a much better job of producing rock-solid devices and ecosystem that can do bluetooth/wifi well, and throw in I/O.

Minor nitpick just because I want them to be credited properly. nRF is the product, nordic semiconductor is the company.

Yes, you are correct, i typed it too quickly.

You're right. I should not have judged like that and I apologize. What I should have said is that I have seen a lot of misplaced skepticism in this industry and I never really understood it. There is plenty of room for Arduino to enter this market and develop good products. We'll see what happens.

Sure, I'm not sure what industry/professional IOT really means, because it's too vague.

I agree the BLE/WIFI in the industrial space is a hilariosu mess, but Arduino is actually much worse at both - libraries like wifimulti_generic exist because there is no true standardized API that is useful enough, and wifi itself is fairly unreliable on lots of arduino devices - it's very easy to get them to crash just using the standard APIs.

I assume this is just arduino-in-din-rail format with other words on top. I would not say anything about "industry IOT" if i was them, nobody is going to use it in the industrial space.

Talking about Portenta, to be fair, Massimo and Arduino people IMO have done a pretty good job at characterising the product as "useful for something not extremely complex under the control/automation/engineering requirements PoV but where expanded IoT possibilities can be a huge selling point, and especially useful for systems which are serially produced". So, no process control or huge machinery, think more like mid-size ovens [https://www.arduino.cc/pro/case-studies-rinaldi-ovens] or things like this. I think the Arduino people are being very aware of the industry needs and are not being unrealistic "wahh PLCs sux lets throw them all away" kind of people ( :D ).

As for me, as an industrial controls professional, I welcome these new solutions, they're another tool in my toolbox. It's up to my engineering decision to evaluate the proper usage of tools.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com