Hacker News Reader

Comment by lukeck | Hacker News Reader

Are Aruinos really aimed at the professional prototyping market? I’ve always had the impression they are aimed at students and hobbyists. These two groups are generally more price sensitive but do also value ease of use.

For these non-professional groups, what are the benefits of a $20 Arduino ESP32 vs. one of the many $4 ones?

View on HN

People use arduinos in real professional prototypes, yes. Some prototypes are held together with pieces of string inside.

Edit: if you want an example industry, the one I can remember is a bean to cup coffee machine. I guess having multiple small systems that need controlling in consumer appliances is a good fit for something like an Arduino

You (usually) don't use an Arduino in production, you take the ATMEGA chip, or in this case an ESP32 and you make your own custom board from it.

This doesn't answer the question: which industry professionals prototype their embedded products using an Arduino?

The only two examples I can thing of are not Arduino and not prototypes (these are production units) but the Wi-Fi module for Garo EV chargers is a Raspberry Pi with an angled GPIO header.[0]

Also, the Wi-Fi module for Ebeco floor heating thermostats is a custom PCB with a SMD mounted ESP32 board. They never show that side of the PCB in the photos online but I have one and that's what it is.[1]

[0]: https://www.garo.se/sv/proffs/produkter/e-mobility/tillbehor...

[1]: https://www.ebeco.com/products/accessories/eb-connect-wifi

You... don't?

You use Arduino for their super good support and documentation while you're building your device. It's only for prototypes.

You can buy $4 boards off Aliexpress, but then you have to deal with poor documentation, clone boards, buggy code, etc.

I lost 4 days trying to make an SPI screen just "work", until I realized my clone board was outputting the signals offset due to a hardware bug.

Not a product in itself but I've seen one used to prototype an automated testing solution for existing hardware.

I'm not sure why it'd be particularly surprising? Their whole thing is being easy to use and quick to iterate with.

Like, you want their names?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com