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Comment by scriptproof | Hacker News Reader

If I well understood, it is recommended now to support the team to buy a clone rather that an original Arduino?

Absolutely. Arduino (both of them) have dropped the ball. Atmels are great for small low-everything projects. But once you move up to dealing with more complex data, they just don't have the horsepower... And when they do, you end up with the Arduino Yun, which is a binary blob of closed sourceness. Might as well go with a RasPi/uno combo for best of both worlds.

Since the Chinese have been innovating here a lot, here's some links to get you started. And yes, I like AliExpress and Ali Baba.

Pro mini $1.68 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Pro-Mini-Module-Atmega328-5V-...

Nano $2.52 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1PCS-Nano-3-0-controller-comp...

Uno $3.15 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Best-prices-UNO-R3-MEGA328P-f...

Mega $9.85 http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Freeshipping-Mega-2560-R3-Meg...

There's the arduino zero(cortex-m0) or arduino due(cortex-m3) which are powerful,and mostly compatible with the arduino - and probably have a decent community around them. So i'm not sure they've"dropped the ball".

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STM32F103C8T6-ARM-STM32-Minimum-Syst...

Wow £2.15 for a Uno! Paid 4x that on eBay.

I currently have one switching a fan on and off periodically to exercise some seedlings (tomatoes, chillis) so not a massive CPU demand here :)

The RPi is based on a 32 bit processor and complex operating software. Great for things that need a web interface or have to interact with complex protocols. You wouldn't consider something like a RPi if you could get the reliability and ease of implementation of a simple program running on an 8 bit processor.

I agree.

Where the Rpi<>Arduino combo comes in is where you need PWM and analog inputs in an easy form factor. Arduino talks to RPi over USB serial, and is easy to script. The Arduino can be the controller interface while logic can be done on the RPi.

Also if you're doing computation expensive things (like using Arduino to pick up EEG data), the CPU on an Arduino is sufficient in ferrying the data to a faster CPU.

I know I'm living in a pretty small world of likeminded people and startup IoT companies, but it seems to me _everybody_ hits on the idea of "RaspberryPi + Arduino", then iterates until they end up with some very familiar looking ARM SOC + Atmel 8 bit microcontroller. It's astoundingly common. (And that's because it's a really good idea.)

What Ive seen in the tight knit IoT communities is the ESP8266 going like wildfire. Its a crazy little chip, cheap and easy to use with LUA.

And when it finishes FCC tests, will be legal to implement in designs here :)

Holy cow that's cheap. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the six that I just bought, but now they'll be accessible at a moment's notice when the inspiration strikes.

Wow, those prices are insanely low. The atmel chips themselves can cost more than these boards.

Those prices are amazing. Do you know how the quality level compares?

Sure do. I'v reviewed them over at crankylinuxuser.wordpress.com , my blog.

Tl;dr: They're worth it. Well worth it.

And you with the CH340 serial driver, you won't be FTDIcked around.

Well, in fact the CH340 can be a problem, at least for Macs.

The manufacturer's own driver is unsigned, so for years you had to disable kernel security features just to run it, and with the latest OS X release, it causes kernel panics outright.

There is an excellent third party driver at https://www.mac-usb-serial.com, but the $7 for that (in itself a very reasonable price) start pushing the clones back toward the price range of the originals.

If you want to support the team you should buy from http://store.arduino.cc/ or from any other site. You should not buy from http://www.smartprj.com/ which is the Arduino Srl site.

Except that almost all the boards are sold out. Is there any other alternative?

Sparkfun's Arduino-like boards pay back a percentage to the inventors.

Here is a huge list of presumably legit distributors:

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

For example: DigiKey has thousands of the Arduino Uno in stock.

Except that there are reports (http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=307397.0) that the boards from official distributors are shipping with Arduino Srl's USB Vendor ID, indicating that purchasing any "official" Arduino is likely funding the attack on Arduino LLC.

Hence the GP's observation that buying a 'no-name' clone seems to currently be the least-harmful option available.

Once you already have an Arduino (one with a DIP socketed AVR chip like an Uno), a great option is to just buy ATMEga 328 or similar ICs with the Arduino bootloader burned on them and build standalone circuits around those, which requires only a 28 pin socket, a voltage regulator, a 16mhz crystal(or whatever clock rate you want to use), and a couple caps. Your Arduino board basically then serves as a programmer for the AVR.

Well that absolves me of a ton of guilt!

I've bought a few cheap clones off ebay over the last couple of years.

Shouldn't feel guilty. It's OSHW, anyone can build their own and resell.

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