Hacker News Reader

Comment by okl | Hacker News Reader

I'm not into Arduinos but I think they are not selling their products because they have the largest RAM or the fastest CPU but because of the Arduino IDE, the language and the community.

View on HN

Yeap. My first attempts to move away from Arduino were an absolute nightmare, even though I treated it as a development board and had ditched the Arduino libraries. There was too much inconsistent information from the community about third-party STM32 boards. ESP32 boards were okay given my skill level, but I certainly wouldn't recommend them for novices. The relatively recent Pi Pico was a refreshing change due to the consistent documentation, but it is something where you have to be willing to sit down and read the documentation. And that is only considering programming the things, you still have to build something around it.

I'm sure there are good alternative to the Arudino out there. Arduino certainly wasn't the first to market with beginner friendly development boards and the popularity of Arudino only attracted more companies to the market. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to figure out who to go with since there is so much meaningless noise out there.

The Arduino hardware abstraction layer has really been one of the biggest steps towards a more universal and interoperable set of software for bare silicon. Yet as you experienced, even then it wasn't enough to bridge the gap fully.

The fact that we call other boards "Arduino alternatives" is partially a testament to that. (Say, instead of "AVR alternatives")

It's certainly not perfect, always the fastest, doesn't expose all the features one might need, but it makes prototyping and portability oh so much easier. I'm glad we have something.

This was also my path. I'm still surprised that stm32 development is not more widely taught. I'm also surprised that products like the leaflabs maple didn't take over.

The ESP32 can be programmed through the Arduino IDE, using the exact same language. I've done that.

Now the ESP32 as usually delivered is not pin or voltage compatible, but surely that's not that hard of a problem. Just make an Arduino shaped board for it, and use a level shifter?

In fact this very thing seems to exist:

https://freematics.com/store/index.php?route=product/product...

So now you need to add a level shifer increase the number of mistakes and the risk of ruining your board. Your solution makes life of hobbyists less enjoyable IMHO.

The GPIO are not level shifted in the board you link.

Maybe that's not the right board, but a level shifter is what, $1 or so? Could be on the board itself easily.

Please try to imagine you are a begginner again.

Of course I don't mean I expect a beginner to get a board made so that they can use a surface mount level shifter for their beginner project.

My question here is why the weird approach? Why have two MCUs on a board, and have the one that the user interacts with be the technically inferior one?

Why not just make a better version of the ESPRIT? Just add a level shifter to it, and there you go: form factor compatible, 5V compatible, and more powerful than Arduino's not yet released project. And probably cheaper to manufacture than the two MCU design they came up with.

And yeah, you can use exactly the same IDE and API for the ESP32.

Renesas had been trying to get into Arduino market, previously with Gadget Renesas efforts. Arduino is expanding more into (over-bloated...) industrial control applications for heavy industries. There, I would assume, the both parties saw aligned interests to have a Renesas chip in the center of a new Arduino(maybe ARM might be in it too).

Performance must have been a non-issue, they make everything from timers for rice cookers to custom ISA smartphone SoCs. It must have been just an option that is good enough, easily available and comfortably low-tech to let to an enthusiast with an SEM in his basement.

Okay, now that finally makes some sense!

Though does Arduino really amount to something measurable to a giant like Renesas? And I presume that Arduino plans to keep the IDE and API, so not like 99% of people would be learning anything about the details of Renesas' chips.

Renesas/then-Hitachi H8 and Microchip PIC were popular in Japanese EE colleges and Universities. The H8 was always a bit too advanced, more popular in more niche robotics than plain EE, and must have been not too important for Renesas. But the latter was blown away entirely by AVR as Arduino came around and created a whole hobbyist industry.

IDE and API won't be issues, it's just bare C/C++ and APIs are just extra standard libraries. But the popularity of Arduino and ATmega328P/ATmega32U, its expanded talent pools, etc must be somewhat tempting and potentially-vital-looking for Renesas, while also not too tempting nor threatening to make substantial changes to its operations and focus on over the counter chip sales.

I think the suggestion is to make an electrically compatible Uno board by incorporating the level shifters onto the board. The end user wouldn't have to think about them because they are already there.

Why would you need to add a level shifter. Almost every single i2c or SPI component I've used works just fine with the ESPs 3.3v or is 3.3v to 5v compatible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com