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Comment by spongle | Hacker News Reader

Now the simple has been made incredibly complicated and it's virtually impossible to take a design based on these to production for the amateur!

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Seconded. I personally prefer the simplicity of the existing arduinos, but if someone needs one of these boards then why not use a raspberry pi or beaglebone that have mature ecosystems?

I suspect these boards are being released in response to the rasberry pi, although I can't say for certain they're an appropriate replacement. Besides its not as if they're ending the old line of arduino boards, so if you don't like the new ones... just don't buy them :)

I'm sure you're right about the new boards being a response to the rpi. I just have mixed feelings about the possibility of competition between two open source hardware systems. Maybe it'll produce innovation, or maybe just duplication of effort.

"if you don't like the new ones... just don't buy them"

I didn't say I disliked them. Since I didn't make myself clear: I do wish them well.

I'd guess that pin compatibility with existing Arduino shields is pretty important. Also, the TRE has both an AVR processor which can run the standard Arduino code as well as an ARM processor for running Linux. So you could use the AVR for low-latency polling of the GPIO pins while using the ARM for communicating over what looks like an ethernet port, four USB ports, two audio jacks, and an HDMI port.

Raspberry Pi doesn't have enough pins for some projects. With a Linux system, neither one of them are suitable for real-time updates.

I'm working on a rover project that uses Raspberry Pi for WiFi and HD video processing, and Arduino for motor control. Best of both worlds. The TRE board sounds perfect if it can come in at a similar price point.

For quite a few systems I've built recently, I've used a Raspberry Pi connected to an Arduino Nano over USB. The Nano is the I/O expansion for the Pi. This combination is cheap (£35 total) and really flexible. Having them bundled would be useful sometimes, but equally often it's useful to have the small size of the nano located close to where I want the I/O and the larger Pi can be put elsewhere. So unless these boards are around the same price point, I'll give them a miss.

nah. those will cost same/more than the already established beagle boards.

arduino will still be the popular cheap diy go to board. this is for projects that were impossible with the current one. so not making the original more complex, but tapping other markets

Speaking of beagleboard -- why does beagleboard have a banner saying:

(image of beagle) + arduino = (image of new arduino board)

Interesting! (here's the image showing at beagle.org http://www.ti.com/ww/en/beagleboard/950x267_arduino_beaglebo... )

I bet it is because, as the article says, that board was developed together with TI.

TI is trying to get hold of this market for some time... beagle, launchpad, etc. heck, i even got my beagle bone and a few launchpads for free from them.

I think IT having those boards and making them cheap, is like Microsoft not caring about pirated windows outside of the US in the 90s. It creates the ecosystem with 'users' who drives large volume sales later?

The TRE design builds upon the experience of both Arduino and BeagleBoard.org, combining the benefits of both community based boards.

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardTre

Perhaps we could consider situations in which the original amateurs could be growing in knowledge and expertise.

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