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Comment by kefka | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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 :)

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

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.

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.

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 :)

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