Arduino choices

Ivan Vegvary · 2012-10-23T03:46:51+00:00

Want to buy an Arduino. Too many choices that I don't understand. Prices all seem to be nearly the same. Arduino will be used by a small group of high school students to build a "p ick and place" robotics arm. School has a 3D printer and a laser cutter. We also have lots of motors and servos from VEX robotics kits. We could us e the VEX controllers but I would like the students to learn an "open sourc e" platform. Process will included sketching, designing parts using Auto C ad Inventor, printing the base, arms, knuckles, motor supports, gears, etc. with the 3D printers, winding a coil to create an electro-magnet as the pi ck up. Goal will be to autonomously and with joy sticks pick and place sma ll metal discs. Anyway, could some of you point me as to what flavor or version of Arduino to purchase. Also what tutorials (books) would you recommend. Thanks, Ivan Vegvary

Michael A. Terrell 13 years ago

I plan to use one of them in the custom soldering station I'm building.

of course, it's a classic Catch-22 situation. I need better soldering irons to assemble the soldering station. I bought a 150W adjustable up converter (Up to 30 V output) to use one of the new irons to build it. :)

Vote

Phil Hobbs 13 years ago

Arduino uses a sort of bastardized C++, but you can usually ignore the differences. Eclipse is an open-source IDE that has plugins for C, C++, Java, and most of the languages-du-jour, as well as a bunch of other things. The debugger is gdb, which isn't very good, but nearly everyone uses it because it's free, ubiquitous, and pretty well supported.

There's a non-GDB open-source debugger project called ZeroBugs, which I quite like, but it was written by one guy who now has a day job and can't support it very well. It's streets ahead of the usual linux debuggers, but not as good as the Visual Studio one, let alone the IBM VisualAge one (which was the gold standard, RIP).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net

Vote

George Herold 13 years ago

Well at least it's better than having to build the lathe to turn the screw, that...

(EE Smith, "Skylark of Space" (?))

George H.

Vote

Michael A. Terrell 13 years ago

I'm trying to get a damaged Atlas lathe that's about 40 years old. Another Catch-22. If it was working, I could make replacement parts. :(

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required