ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 27, 2011 Author Share Posted December 27, 2011 and as i said, there are efforts to develop an interpreter to run arduino's programs on MSP430 Out of curiosity, can you give some pointers? Wait... A interpreter? I have not recollection whatsoever (Clinton's style ) regards Quote Link to post Share on other sites
EngIP 31 Posted December 27, 2011 Share Posted December 27, 2011 Are we talking about this? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 27, 2011 Author Share Posted December 27, 2011 Are we talking about this? Hello EngIP - Nope, although that seems to be a an interesting approach, For some reason most of the people believe that all the magic is done by Processing, where processing is just used to interpret the Arduino programs and create the hex compiled files for Atmel MCU, all the underlaying C/C++ libraries are pretty much common with a minor MCU code specific. Is like using a basic interpreter to read, compile and create the equivalent assembly code for the processor, in this case Processing reads predefined macros and translate that to underlaying C/C++. Perl, Phyton (which is just another abstraction of Perl) or C or any other high level/ high power lenguaje can be used to accomplish the same. Well i am not a software expert by any means, though. regards Luis Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 28, 2011 Author Share Posted December 28, 2011 Pinguino Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jim940 28 Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 Pinguino But what that has, which your product wont: Pinguino Language is compatible with Arduino's Language, Libraries and Shields. Showing off a bunch of Arduino footprints to try and validate your little project doesn't work when it is still missing the complete picture of the Arduino compatibles. A good analogy (assuming WINE didn't already exsist) is like you trying to sell 2 desktop PC's with the tower, keyboard, mouse and monitor, except your telling your customers (that would be us) that your Linux box is compatible with your competitors (Microsoft), except "Oh I'm sure you can come up with the API layer to interface your PC to all of your existing Windows software". At best its a half truth, at worst, its well snake oil. Jim oPossum 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 28, 2011 Author Share Posted December 28, 2011 Jim, thanks for your feedback, but you missed the whole point of showing the other processors with Arduino's footprint??!!, what i am trying to show to the MSP430 comunity that the vast majority of MCU families have a processor with that form factor why would that be??? what are we missing??!! what do they know that we don't?? and we are redesigning the wheel every single time, there is a shield for most everything!, LCD, BT, CDMA, Motor controllers, AUDIO, video, Reflow Oven... you name it - DONE..., Now look at the post from EngIP on this thread, a single quick and dirty C header gives you access to the basic arduino lenguaje, Can you imagine what an serious effort from a MUCH BIGGER player can do, just hold on there for few months, by the way, i do not like Arduino although it brings on my the laziness since much everything is written and available but when doing serious development hits the wall fair and square and not tools to debug, the majoriry of the time i like better to write my own Assy or C since i like to keep track of my bits and bytes... I like CCS and the tools to debug which are not existant on ARDUINO but that is a different question. i am guilty of taking ARDUINO developed code and port it to MSP430 just because i like the tool... Later. Luis Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jim940 28 Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 what i am trying to show to the MSP430 comunity that the vast majority of MCU families have a processor with that form factor why would that be??? what am I missing??!! what do they know that I don't?? Fixed it for you. If your going to market a product, especially in such a "big" way, you must realize that market research of the demographics your targeting is generally more important then how good or how bad the product really is. The purpose of Arduino like uC Development boards is well that they are easy (sometimes near brain dead) to work with. Which you mentioned, but hardware is not the "hard" part of development, writing libraries to make the hardware work is. Which is why just about every Arduino compatible shield designer/seller, offers a library that is plug and play into the Arduino IDE. Which isn't anything new in the uC world, the BASIC Stamp family of uC's had a lot of DIP module parts that could be easily installed on a breadboard, and every "extra" piece of hardware that was targeted to BASIC stamp users had a library courtesy of the sellers or manufacturers website's downloadable content. Arduino just carries this forward, from being relatively easy to program, to then being easy to do hardware interfacing, as the form factor and connections between the Arduino and the shields are decided by the shield makers leaving no room for the user to misjumper a cable on the bread board like the BASIC Stamp allowed. Arduino = Libraries to make programming easy PLUS the hardware you keep talking about. Without one or the other, its target demographic for anything "Arduino compatible" is totally left to dry. Porting the functions over isn't enough, nor is it really a start, the Arduino compatible uC boards today write wiring libraries (Wiring is a program by the way) that interface with the appropriate GCC version to do low level translation of AVR code inside processing itself (Processing is a program as well) making the individual functions meaningless as it ports over the code in a boarder sense instead of replicating each and every function imaginable. Even different versions of "official" Arduino use the same wiring libraries tell the compiler how to handle code for the UNO instead of the Mega or vice versa. Jim Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 28, 2011 Author Share Posted December 28, 2011 Jim, that was an excellent post, mostly true,in the other hand i would ask you how many platforms have you used that are Arduino compatible form factor? i can tell you that for example FEZ does not use the same libraries as Arduino but translated versions, most of the others have their own versions of the IDE. the only question you did not answer, why don't we have an MSP430 with ARDUINO form factor? we need to start somewere... I do not think Arduino was an overnight thing, mostly developed by the comunity that is what makes Arduino so popular!! not the MCU or the hardware, but really the community working on it Merrry Christmast and happy New Year Luis Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Rickta59 589 Posted December 28, 2011 Share Posted December 28, 2011 ... I do not think Arduino was an overnight thing, mostly developed by the comunity that is what makes Arduino so popular!! not the MCU or the hardware, but really the community working on it ... Luis I've come that that same conclusion Luis. It is all about the community! If you look around, you can find $10 ARM development boards that have much more processing power and on board peripherals than Arduinos and Launchpads. However, you don't see a big ground swell of community around them. I'm glad your at least putting the MSP430 on the map Luis. It will be interesting to see if you can nurture a community to make it a big success. -rick Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jim940 28 Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 the only question you did not answer, why don't we have an MSP430 with ARDUINO form factor? we need to start somewere... I do not think Arduino was an overnight thing Some aspects of it were developed too quickly too soon, such as the blatant over sight of the .160" spacing which supposedly was a "mistake" that got over looked because people, including themselves, rushed the gun, developed shields etc based on Eagle part files that were never checked for spacing, and never produced a PCB for prototype checking before going ahead with the production run. Oversights such as the spacing, or in your case, hardware compatibility without the ease of use aspects, are the ones that can make or break a product. Arduino already had a large enough following during the design stages that it didn't matter, they were first and everyone else was willing to follow. Its like the early days of the IBM PC, it didn't matter if your PC looked like a IBM PC, all that mattered for most consumers is if it was "IBM PC Compatible" or not. Hardware without software compatibility killed a lot of early PC makers, which is why so many companies went to great lengths to make a "non-infringing" IBM compatible BIOS. Since you are the one standing to profit from this effort, you must remember that when your trying to break into a market that already knows what it wants, you must work to suit your product for it. Jim Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MattTheGeek 99 Posted December 29, 2011 Share Posted December 29, 2011 and we are redesigning the wheel every single time, there is a shield for most everything!, LCD, BT, CDMA, Motor controllers, AUDIO, video, Reflow Oven... you name it - DONE..., The Launchpad is a unique and special platform. That's why we redesign. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 Hello Jim, thanks for your inputs. very well said. regards Luis Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ohmselectronics 6 Posted December 29, 2011 Author Share Posted December 29, 2011 and we are redesigning the wheel every single time, there is a shield for most everything!, LCD, BT, CDMA, Motor controllers, AUDIO, video, Reflow Oven... you name it - DONE..., The Launchpad is a unique and special platform. That's why we redesign. Thanks Matt, let me ask you this, why do we use Launchpad? is it because is cheap? i refuse to think that is the only reason, i believe we like the MSP430 architecture and the support tools (perhaps i am a dreamer?? ), in this case i love CCS, hence why would be unique or what makes it special?, if we can readopt the Arduino's form factor and have access to things already designed avoiding to "redesign the wheel" everytime. One big draw back from MSP430 is that does not have a lot of processors that support 5V. But is interesting to see the reaction of the MSP430 comunity on a thing like that. I would like to know what the full spectrum of users think about a system like that? from newbies to the real thing, Regards Luis Quote Link to post Share on other sites
debraj.de1 0 Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Hi, how can we buy padrino? Also can it act as a usb host and communicate with android phone through usb, just like other arduino boards? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
larsie 121 Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I don't think I'm in the target market. I've done lots of Arduino projects, but I almost always made my own board, skipping the shields. Mainly because of the price (mainly of the arduinos, but I guess partly because of the shields also). Not that I'm rational about price, so it's hard to explain or justify. It was the software and libraries (and the open source community) that made me use Arduino. Not the shields. I've got 2 Arduino boards, and about 20 Atmega328 chips that I used interchangeably for different projects. I guess I've got about 8 Launchpads and I don't know how many MSP430 chips... (not sure why!?) I'm not sure how large the shield market is... larger than I think I guess. There are however other plugin concepts as alternatives to the Arduino based shields, like Grove. And of course normal breakout boards for components, that just get wired onto the board. And I'm not sure how many people use shields vs make their own stuff with bread boards etc. Any guesses? I have lots more non-standard breakout boards than shields. Why did I switch to Launchpad? I think it's the price... something new... I liked the concept of 'value line'... minimialistic chips at low costs. 3V is not a problem. Was a bit annoying in the beginning, but when I got used to it, it was no problem. In fact I now prefer it. I think TI has sold a lot of these Launchpad boards... really lots... What is of course surprising is that there isn't yet a large community. Not sure how many people visit this site daily? Bluehash? Is the reason the shields? Or the software? Or the IDEs? Or tutorials? Or marketing? Not sure... But most people are probably not as weird as me. I would probably enjoy reinventing boiling also... it could be fun if I did it a cool new way (Hmmm... my brain starts thinking). But I'd rather re-invent beer I guess. So many of the projects I do are really just copies of cool stuff others have done. It also is like reinventing boiling. But I wish you the best of luck and hope you are successful. Though I must admit that at the suggested price-point I'd rather go for a faster and more capable chip solution. But as mentioned, not everyone is like me... fortunately for the world there aren't too many of us who would spend our time reinventing beer Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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