MCU religious wars (OT?)

[Paul Andrews]

It seems that people have very strong opinions about what MCU (is there a better term?) they like to use in projects. In particular there are some strong feelings against the Arduino and the use of libraries. So maybe we can air our opinions in this thread (in a civil manner! No personal attacks please, and bear in mind that language can be tricky to interpret at times, especially if English is not a first language - mods, feel free to close this down if you think it is open to abuse or not appropriate for this group).

My own feeling is that libraries are one of the strong suits of a platform like the arduino - they allow me to focus on what I am trying to achieve, rather than having to re-invent the wheel (though, obviously, there is nothing stopping me re-inventing the wheel if I feel the need!). I am a professional software developer who has written code at all levels - OS code, libraries, compilers, assemblers, embedded systems, device drivers, distributed systems, enterprise systems, databases, network protocols, GUIs, web sites and even applications (though that isn't my strong suit!) There are probably some areas that I haven't touched. I enjoy it all, but life is too short to constantly write this stuff, and those who do so full time generally do a better job of it.

As far as Arduinos go - they are cheap and easy to program and I use them a lot for prototyping (actually I use the tiny WeMos D1 mini pros now). I even have one clock that is an Arduino shield, though you wouldn't know it - its form factor is not that of your average shield. As a testament to its flexibility, this allowed me to easily extend both the software and the hardware to better suit what I wanted.

And yes, I have moved on to other hardware, but I still use all those Arduino libraries.

Surface mounting seems to be another contentious topic. It seems that I have embraced it whole-heartedly, though I started down that route because the interesting chips I wanted to use where all surface mount. Aesthetically I think through-hole components suit Nixie tubes better, and I like to see the circuitry exposed, though that is also a preference that I know some others very much disagree with.

Truth is, I want to use it all! 

[Dan Hollis]

Why is it perfectly ok for people to use libc, ncurses, pthread, pcre,
opengl, etc on linux but using an i2c library on arduino is somehow
verboten?

As I stated before, this is the exact same derangement infecting many
in the amateur radio hobby. It turns off a lot of people wanting to get
into radio.

We should be welcoming people to the hobby, especially for the small
subset interested in obsolete display technology.

"pity about the arduino"?

We don't need this elitism and exclusionary attitude.

We should be happy people are taking interest in the hobby at all.

-Dan

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[gregebert]

I thought I was locked-and-loaded to go with Arduino after I ran some speed-tests and was satisfied. Still had to attach a cable and run software on a host system to program it, though that wasn't a showstopper. Code-space measured in Kbytes was a secondary worry. Cost was very reasonable.

That all ended for me when the $10 (US) RasPi Zero W came out. The nail-in the-coffin for me was having WiFi accessibility so I could remotely program/update. All the other stuff, like Gbytes of local storage, Linux goodness, and networking at no extra cost only made it better.

[Paul Andrews]

Yes, I am sorely tempted by the RasPi. I am considering using MQTT, and I will need a server. That might be my excuse to get one...

ESPxxxx have way more code space, but come with their own restrictions. Still my go-to at the moment though.

I looked at the ATTiny recently for a very small form-factor device, but then the ESPxxxx is also small and has WiFi, more GPIO and more flash. Haven't decided yet

[Paul Andrews]

And of course, I meant the ESPxxxx has way more code space than the arduino.

[John Smout]

> On 24 Jan 2018, at 00:23, Dan Hollis <parkxz...@anime.net> wrote:
>
> Why is it perfectly ok for people to use libc, ncurses, pthread, pcre, opengl, etc on linux but using an i2c library on arduino is somehow verboten?

I don’t think it is forbidden at all, but it is my observation that the bulk of enquiries I get through my website are from empty vessels making the loudest noise. Empty because they don’t have any personal knowledge of their own. They don’t feel they have the time or inclination to learn either, but are quite happy to get me to waste my time on their behalf if at all possible. Whatever happened to the sheer joy of getting a blinky light to flash by one’s own efforts?

I am sure there are millions of people happy to code up and document their projects and annotate their libraries for the benefit of others and I am sure many people are grateful to take and use what they can from them. All is well in heaven and the gods can rest easy. I have no problem myself in sharing or being generous.

Maybe I have been unlucky in my experience, but often when I help someone whom I do not know it turns sour on me. As far as they are concerned I can gratify their needs but rarely does anyone consider how it might impinge on my available time and if I don’t give continued support to their projects people have turned ugly and rude very quickly. The level of this is in inverse proportion to people’s ability to help themselves. I fear that a grab-it-off the-shelf-ready-made culture only encourages this attitude.

John S

[J Forbes]

MCUs? Libraries? And I felt really bad about using a semiconductor rectifier in my neon light, all tube digital clock (non-nixie). http://selectric.org/tubeclock/clock2018.jpg  Yet I had no qualms about using old TTL chips in my cigar box clock. http://selectric.org/nixie/cigar2.jpg

As far as what processor to use in "modern" Nixie projects ...I expect the best one to use, is the one you either know how to use, or want to learn how to use.

One day, I may figure out how to do something with a microcontroller. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy what others do, using whatever darn platform they want to use.

[Bill van Dijk]

John, well said!
It is not about "verboten", nor wrong or right. Open discussion unfortunately tends to gravitate that direction when strong opinions are involved. Is the art of open unbiased debate dying?

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[gregebert]

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 4:23:56 PM UTC-8, bani wrote:

 

As I stated before, this is the exact same derangement infecting many
in the amateur radio hobby. It turns off a lot of people wanting to get
into radio.

Wow...that's a blast-from-the-past for me.  When I started high school, my favorite electronics book was the ARRL Handbook. I never got into radio because I was too lazy to learn Morse-code. But I did stick with electronics and eventually went into the latest rage at that time: microprocessors.

 

[jb-electronics]

I also get a lot of emails from people inquiring qhether I can build
something for them. Only in a few cases there is someone who tried to
understand the schematic and has a specific problem. Most of the times
the inquiries are of the form "Hey that is cool. I want something like
that, but with these specific modifications. Can you build this and that
for me?"

While I appreciate the positive feedback, and even more appreciate the
fact that electronics is still considered "cool", here is what worries
me: we live in a society where everything has to be available at all
times. Instant gratification. But this is not how science works.
Goalposts have to be set, and then you have to spend some time to reach
them. And it will be a piece of work. But when you get there, it is all
worth it. Other goalposts you will never reach, and that is fine, too.

I just have a problem with this "science is cool" mentality, because it
is often understood as "science is easy." Electronics kits with
everything pre-installed, in my opinion, should therefore be used with care.

Cheers
Jens

[Paul Andrews]

So this is my optimistic take on 'the youth of today' (full disclosure: I have three sons, the eldest of which just started university): I suspect that society has always had a larger proportion of consumers than creators, I just think that the internet makes it easier for consumers to contact producers directly. I choose not to believe that the percentage of producers is actually decreasing.

I used to mentor my eldest son's robotics team at his high school, including students from the ages of 14 through 18. There were several interesting aspects to this. One was that after the start of the season, the number of pupils attending fell rapidly to a core set who were extremely motivated. Even then it could take three or four years for them to figure out what aspect of building a robot interested them most and for them to also figure out that if they wanted to be a big part of the team, they basically had to just grab some function themselves and run with it. We were there to expose them to the possibilities and provide help and guidance on how they might achieve what they were aiming for.

The organization behind these teams is First Robotics. They organize events every year. Each year they specify a different challenge and define the parameters for the build and the challenge. The teams have only six weeks to build, program, test and practice with their robot. There is a minimal set of parts that can be bought and some specific ones that have to be used, but there are no kits and no plans. It provides students with the chance to create and to learn how to create, as well as teaching other real-world skills such as organizing, researching, using tools, programming etc.

[SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.]

To be potically correct ;-)  :    Arduino  is not a micocontroller, its just a simplification of programming language. Mostly "Arduino" projects are running on Atmega MCU's from Atmel, but Arduino can also run on ESP8266, Atmel ARM and even som ST STM32.

I think the modern microcontrollers are mostly the same level for hobbyist and most commercial application. To switch a few leds or control a display any modern MCU will do the job. Its either a question of knowledge and infrastrcuture. If your company used Atmel for the last 10 years, its pricy to change to ST or so.

About the "Arduinos" or Ardunio with own design:

I really like it, since it takes a part of programming away. Arduino was designed for people who don't see programming or even electronics as their main hobby. Alot of people like to do stuff with lights (e.g. for Art projects) or other parts. Getting familiar with electronics can be a challenging hobby itself. The Arduino Language can be learned very fast, and the support is really great, even for beginners. You can get an anwer in the arduino forum even for the most simple (or hard for someone) questions. Try ask Microchip or ST Forums for "how to turn a led on" - you either get ignored,removed or people make fun out of you.

I have a friend which is 15 years old, shes choose electronics as a voluntary school course. They get pretty cool projects to work in just a half year. I remember when i had to learn PIC programming for mandatory school, and we were learning just all the commands for weeks without doing anything usefull, or filling 2 pages with instructions just to blink a led. So arduino is just a good thing to "lure" people to programming, if you get a easy start you might be more motivated to learn more complex things. Also a arduino can be plugged to usb and you can start right away! No fancy debugger tools :-). 

On the downside, arduino is just a performance killer, if you take a look at "digitalWrite" as a professional, its just a waste of processor speed and code. And if you want to get arduino running on a custom chip, you will be on your own.


My main MCU's are the Atmega328p (QFP & DIP) , ESP8266 and newly STM32

The ATmegas are cool because they run native with arduino, and there is still a DIP Model available which is just great if you want quickly test something - try to place a QFP in your breadboard :)
ESP8266 is wonderfull because its really cheap and brings wifi on its own...

I'm currently starting to learn STM32 (ARM), because i for my other projects the Atmega328 has just to few pins or is just too slow. But for nixie projects where time is not that critical the Atmega is still my favourite. But for like building a gamma spectrometer the chip will run out of speed, memory and power.

As far as i know, ARM (STM32, NXP, etc) can be programmed mostly the same.  Also the STM32 IDE's bring debugging features that can be really time saving if you just can place a breakpoint where you think there is a problem. If you have a very big code on arduino (like 10 A4 Pages) you will search for hours for errors.

STM32 also offers quite nice evaluation boards (with displays) which can be used to save on custom PCB's ...

[J Forbes]

heh....I still mentor team 1726. I've been doing it since my oldest son got me involved in 2006. And all three of them are now mentoring other teams.

sorry for the diversion.

[Paul Andrews]

My son’s team was 1277: http://www.robotomies.com/

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[Dan Hollis]

This has always been the case since the beginning of time and arduino
changes nothing.

-Dan

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[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

I think the hate on Arduino comes from people, who started programming microcontrollers twenty or so years ago, learned how to program one chip and failed to move on to new world, in which efficiency of the code and exact knowledge of what is happening in the hardware is no longer essential. I often see posts on Polish forums claiming that one should write the code in straight C, writing directly to registers, with a 1000+ pages datasheet in his hand, because otherwise one won't really know what his code is doing.

Me? I personally started my experience with MCUs with Arduino and I'm happy about it. I know it is very limited (at least Atmega328p based ones) and that's why I'm currently learning to use STM32s, but I like the simplicity of Arduino - writing a simple program cannot be simplier than that.  I think that if I had to start with anything harder than Arduino, I wouldn't be encouraged to learn embedded programming.

Libraries are always useful. I can't imagine writing the code needed to use USB on STM32 or Wi-Fi on ESP8266 by myself. I usually end up reading chunks of the code, but still it is WAY better than writing it by myself - by reading it I still learn how it is done, but at the same time I have some fully functional code.

So, Arduino (as boards, IDE and libraries) does great job as introduction level MCU for people, who barely know anything about MCUs, but want to push themselves further into the wonderful world of electronics. This is something that was very needed and people who created Arduino hit exactly in the niche. 

[John Smout]

A high proportion of the people who have wanted to rape my time and (very limited) ability electronic-wise are artists and designers. Which saddens me because I consider myself first and foremost a visual arty type person. At any rate it’s how I have always earned my living until I retired last year. If you want to struggle in life and starve at times any kind of artistic design career is a good way to go.

I have tended in recent years to say to these people, who usually have seen something of mine that they want to incorporate into something of theirs and which will involve a redesign of some kind and a new PCB: “OK let’s do it, but let's make two prototypes, one for you to keep and one for me. No money changes hands. I’ll do the circuitry if you will make and give me one of whatever it is that you are making.”

The above angle, which seem perfectly reasonable to me, got me total outrage from a couple of different people - how dare I say my trivial work is as important as their great artistic vision? Don’t I know what precious brainpower has gone into their wonderful oevres? Which of course they cannot do unless someone makes their idea actually work for them. Well I have a backlog of my own ideas to bring to fruition, and while I am doing those I get other ideas, so why do I want to spend the rest of my life with these people?

On the other end of the spectrum, I have had to stop helping schoolchildren who want to use something of mine in a project. I have a real soft spot for helping children, but the amount of blown chips and free replacements I’ve sent out, together with giving them warnings about static and overheating, has totally fallen on deaf ears. This is a real pity and I wish I could do more, but again it is down to available time. It would be quicker to do the kids’ projects for them, but that is not what education is about and we encourage the same “Want it all now and done for me” gratification syndrome if we send kids a working module.

Having a great idea is the first step, not the last. If there is a vision then the person having it should do whatever he or she needs to do to make it happen, including learning how to do it if they want to say it is their own work. A lot of not-very-good-ideas would be weeded out at this stage. "Is the result really worth the personal effort?" is a question that rapidly arises if one relies on one’s own resources?

John S

[Michail Wilson]

2930 Sonic Squirrels.

 

Never would have imagined Nixe folks would be interested in Robotics.  </sarcasm>

 

Congrats Forbes and Andrews.  Good luck to both of you.

 

Michail Wilson

206-920-6312

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[Dan Hollis]

So I think your real problem has absolutely zero to do with arduino or
microcontrollers.

Also interesting you criticize people for wasting your time. People use
libraries to save time. There's little point in poring over 15,000 pages
of chinese datasheets just to get a display to light if someone has done
it already.

If your time is so valuable as you so frequently emphasize, then you
shouldn't criticize people for trying to save their own time.

-Dan

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[Dan Hollis]

People who hate arduino should never, ever look at hackaday.com - they
will be seething with rage at all the little people beneath them daring
to tinker with all sorts of stuff they obviously know nothing about. And
doing it with aruinos and libraries! The horror!

-Dan

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018, Tomasz Kowalczyk wrote:

> I think the hate on Arduino comes from people, who started programming
> microcontrollers twenty or so years ago, learned how to program one chip
> and failed to move on to new world, in which efficiency of the code and
> exact knowledge of what is happening in the hardware is no longer
> essential. I often see posts on Polish forums claiming that one should
> write the code in straight C, writing directly to registers, with a 1000+
> pages datasheet in his hand, because otherwise one won't really know what
> his code is doing.
>
> Me? I personally started my experience with MCUs with Arduino and I'm happy
> about it. I know it is very limited (at least Atmega328p based ones) and
> that's why I'm currently learning to use STM32s, but I like the simplicity
> of Arduino - writing a simple program cannot be simplier than that. I
> think that if I had to start with anything harder than Arduino, I wouldn't
> be encouraged to learn embedded programming.
> Libraries are always useful. I can't imagine writing the code needed to use
> USB on STM32 or Wi-Fi on ESP8266 by myself. I usually end up reading chunks

> of the code, but still it is *WAY* better than writing it by myself - by

> reading it I still learn how it is done, but at the same time I have some
> fully functional code.
>
> So, Arduino (as boards, IDE and libraries) does great job as introduction
> level MCU for people, who barely know anything about MCUs, but want to push
> themselves further into the wonderful world of electronics. This is
> something that was very needed and people who created Arduino hit exactly
> in the niche.
>

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[threeneurons]

I like Arduinos, and I also still program AVRs in assembly. I see Arduinos as nice trainers, and also a way to make a quick-n-dirty "smart" project. Love the libraries !

I have a hierarchy of pain, when it comes to deciding to do a task in assembly, or use a high level language, like C. Based mostly on the final binary memory size. But the need for doing so, is mostly emotional now, as opposed to economic. I started programming on 8080s and Z80s. The code was stashed on several EPROMs, that took a couple of minutes each to program. The first microcontrollers, I used extensively, was the HC05. Squeezing code into a tight space made sense back then, because the UV erasable chips cost over $50 each. Even the "one-time" programmable devices cost ~$10 each. Now the mega88 I use on my clock kits cost ~$1.80, while its big brother, the mega328, used on Arduinos, cost just a tad over $2. The price difference is negligible.

Just be glad you don't have to wait 20 minutes or more, to erase your devices. I still have a UV eraser floating around somewhere. Don't ask me where. I haven't used it in close to 20 years.

[Paul Andrews]

I had fun explaining the progression of ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM to my eldest.

[Dylan Distasio]

Although UV erasers were before my time, I grew up as a kid with a C64, and although it's not a 6502/10 project, I decided at one point much later in life to build a N8VEM Z80 based computer which strove to use mostly components from the original timeframe of the 8 bit era.  Anyways, I actually ended up buying a cheap UV eraser on fleaBay to use on the EPROM.   While I really enjoyed the overall build, I don't miss having to use that to erase a chip!  Later variations on the project which I also built used an easily flashable ROM thank god.  What was perhaps slightly lost in authenticity was made up for in convenience .  

This was the project for those interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N8VEM

I've also played around with these more recently for fun, although I would still like to build a 6502/10 from scratch based on my own design to honor my C64 roots.  I still miss my Amiga also, but now I'm just getting sentimental...

https://rc2014.co.uk/

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:25 AM, 'threeneurons' via neonixie-l <neoni...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Just be glad you don't have to wait 20 minutes or more, to erase your devices. I still have a UV eraser floating around somewhere. Don't ask me where. I haven't used it in close to 20 years.

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[gregebert]

One thing I noticed about the Arduino interface "standard" is that it lacks important details such as timing (setup, hold, min-prop, max-prop, etc).

This is both a blessing (Ignorance is bliss; irrelevant technical detail such as people using LEDs and motors; makes Arduino easier to use for less-technical people)

.....and a curse (Impossible to prove-out a high-speed design will meet timing in all operating cases, cant analyze signal integrity)

If you need something small, cheap, doesn't need to run fast, and has a large user community, Arduino is tough to beat. Maybe unbeatable.

If you need more memory/compute-power/WiFi, go with RasPi zero W

If you need high-speed control, microcontroller or FPGA is more effort and cost but will get you a proven design.

If you need more memory/compute-power/WiFi, consider adding a RasPi Zero W to support the uC / FPGA

[Joe Croft]

Personally, I like the AVR MCU's though I am slowly starting to grow out of them. The Arduino libraries are convenient but many of them have sloppy poorly documented code. I hate the Arduino IDE (more than I hate ALL IDSs). With that said, I still use the libraries, make my own bards and use an editor and Makefile. Call me old if you must ;).

I am looking to the Raspberry PI or maybe an ESPxxx... not sure which for my next couple of projects.

-joe

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[Dan Hollis]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2018, Joe Croft wrote:
> Personally, I like the AVR MCU's though I am slowly starting to grow out of
> them. The Arduino libraries are convenient but many of them have sloppy
> poorly documented code.

Sloppy poorly documented code is no different than most other open source
projects. Arduino is not an outlier or special case.

-Dan

[Nick Sargeant]

I, like others wanted access to the Arduino libraries, so I tend to use an AVR 328P with a 16MHz crystal, a resistor, two capacitors and a six pin header that I can plug a USB-serial adapter in to. That makes it easy to program, without wasting hardware on the board itself. I buy a kit of the AVR, socket, crystal and two caps from a certain auction site for pennies. If I stick the thing on a socket, I can always use a 'real' Arduino as a programmer for it. 

I'm not much of a software type myself, but the Arduino IDE is a bit primitive even for me, so I have now implemented the Arduino fixes on Code:Blocks so I can use that. 

I create pin-in-hole board designs in Eagle (stuck on version 6.6 now, thanks to the change of licence), get ten or eleven of those shipped from China for less than 20 bucks for 10cm x 10cm, and I have a development board with the stuff on it I want (like a MIDI interface, an LCD or flourescent interface and a few pushbuttons, rotary encoders and a pot or four. Being a good old fashioned pin-in-hole board means I can still *see* the components without a travelling microscope or surgical loupes. It's fast enough for many uses, especially of the Human Interface Device type since we humans are relatively slow. 

But I must admit, one of those RasPi Zero W things looks attractive. They do seem to be double the price in the UK to those prices you mention though .. 

[Dylan Distasio]

Hi Nick-

I'm in the US, but have ordered from Pimoroni in your neck of the woods before.  I love their stuff in general (they have a ton of cool Pi hats!), and believe their prices in GBP are pretty close to the USD prices here ($10USD).  They may be a bit higher with VAT but shouldn't be anywhere near double:

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w

They're a great bit of kit for the price.

Best,

Dylan

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 4:25 PM, Nick Sargeant <niksg...@gmail.com> wrote:

But I must admit, one of those RasPi Zero W things looks attractive. They do seem to be double the price in the UK to those prices you mention though .. 

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[gregebert]

Yeah, the $10 (US) pricing of a RasPi has a lot of caveats:

• You can only buy 1 at that price
• Shipping is additional
• You need to add a power supply and microSD card

I suspect they are breaking-even or losing at $10, so CanaKit makes that up by selling a $25 RasPi + microSD + power supply, with no quantity limit

So, buy 2 (bare Pi for $10, plus the $25 kit), plus shipping.

I dont need the power supply because I always have +5V on my nixie boards, and microSD cards are cheap.

[Paul Andrews]

If you do serious software development on the Arduino platform, may I recommend the Sloeber plugin for Eclipse.

If you don't like Eclipse, well, that is a whole other religious war. Personally I spend my entire professional life in it...

[gregebert]

Does Arduino have predictable overhead when running apps (shields), or is it chaotic like Linux ?

[Paul Andrews]

It’s predictable.

On Jan 26, 2018, at 4:39 PM, gregebert <greg...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Does Arduino have predictable overhead when running apps (shields), or is it chaotic like Linux ?

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[Paul Andrews]

I should be careful. As Arduino is a platform it depends on what it is implemented on top of. It is. It so predictable on an ESPxxxx for example, but it is on an AVR, where I suspect it is closer to the metal.

[Paul Andrews]

That should be “It is not so predictable on an ESPxxxx”