[Noisebridge-discuss] Arduino questions

[dpc]

travis+ml-noisebridge at subspacefield.org writes:

> My understanding is that a microcontroller is ideal for this.
>
> I used to do it with RS-232 and parallel, but they went the way
> of the dino.  I guess USB is the way now.
>
> I heard some of the USB chips and stacks are flaky, and I want
> strictly FLOSS tools, so I asked around, and arduino seems to be
> highly recommended.
>
> So, where should I start?  How do I start?

if you want usb from your thingee to a pc-ish monitoring thingee you can
still talk serial over usb. the ftdi parts seem to be popular, and my
experience w/ them has been positive.

usb isn't so good as a 'network' replacement though (ie, connecting your
sensor network) to the 'manangement' pc.

> I'm willing to sink $200-300 into the board and unit, but only if I
> can be reasonably assured it'll work, be flexible enough for future
> needs, and I won't ruin it by putting it together.

i'm not sure what you're looking for this board/unit to do, but the
basic dev systems get you pretty far since they are intended to be as
general purpose as possible.

i got the the last one i used (rfid cat door control) on closeout from
sparkfun for ~30usd.

  http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=38

on one hand, if i were doing the whole thing from scratch, i'd have done
the clocks/buttons/io slightly differently to get better power
management. in the gripping hand, i got all of the rfid and a bunch of
(text) ui in ~10k (out of 128k) w/o even worrying about space or running
out of io (i'm tacking on zigbee just to blow the rest of my
pin/space budget).

\p

---
People have oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the
easiest side of easy, but it is clear that we must hold to that which is
difficult. - Rainer Maria Rilke