Raspberry Pi Forums

hi, i would like to buy an arduino, but i am not that experienced, which arduino would you suggest for starters?

myself i would say uno - but thats just me

noob wrote:hi, i would like to buy an arduino, but i am not that experienced, which arduino would you suggest for starters?

You do realise this is a Raspberry Pi forum? (even if it is in the off topic section!). Seriously, I'm sure Arduino's forums would be able to give a better opinion.

jamesh wrote:

noob wrote:hi, i would like to buy an arduino, but i am not that experienced, which arduino would you suggest for starters?

You do realise this is a Raspberry Pi forum? (even if it is in the off topic section!). Seriously, I'm sure Arduino's forums would be able to give a better opinion.

Well...no doubt. But in the Arduino forums he'd probably get blasted for asking which model he should get to use with a Raspberry Pi.

You can plug in any arduino board into a PI using USB, but thats a bit of a circumbendibus, as an ATmega chip on 3V3 is a perfect companion to a PI and can connect directly to its UART.

if you just want an "arduino" to expand the I/O capabilities of the PI, like the gertboard does, then don't use a real arduino, better simply use any of the arduino compatible Atmega chips, that runs off 3.3V so you can connect it directly to the PI's UART port, just like the gerboard does. If I'm not mistaken there are expansion boards (lets call them "PIDuino's") that do exactly this already, or there probably will be soon! I thought I saw Element14 selling something like it already. Another possible source might be adafruit.

P.S. picture googling for http://www.google.nl/search?q=raspberry ... 97&bih=948 ("raspberry pi shield") gave me numerous interesting pictures .

P.P.S element14's device is called "embeddedPI" and is an "arduinoshield" (with Arduino CPU) for the raspberry PI.
You find more about it here: http://www.element14.com/community/docs ... essory-epi

but there are probably cheaper similar boards here already or coming soon....

Try this:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 1&p=368522

Tony Goodhew

W. H. Heydt wrote: Well...no doubt. But in the Arduino forums he'd probably get blasted for asking which model he should get to use with a Raspberry Pi.

Not really. If you ask in the non-tech subforum then you get much useful information:

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=169417.0

I bet you can also ask under interface with software since pi is considered as a computer and you can just plug Arduino into its usb port.

Arduino UNO is the best choice in Arduino line-up for beginners.

I would strongly voice against trying out the pi GPIO first with no prior electronics experience. You may toss your pi out of the window if you make ONE wrong move. For Arduino over USB, it has a polyfuse to cut the loss when current flows too much so you may damage the chip on Arduino UNO but it is a few dollars to replace. You move on with more experience and caution, instead of moving on, and away from all this experience together. It is also easily portable to another computer, say when you do need processing power of a modern-day microprocessor. PCs don't have exposed GPIOs but have plenty USB to plug things in. I am using a Debian laptop for projects with arduino that will eventually run on pi. It's faster to compile anything with a laptop. Just my 2 cents.

Try this : http://www.bitwizard.nl/catalog/product ... cts_id=126

The Raspduino is an Arduino compatible microcontroller board, designed to plug on top of a Raspberry Pi (some people like to call this a Pi Plate). It is then possible to add Arduino shields to the Raspduino.
The Raspduino is powered by a ATmega328 microcontroller, and can be programmed with the regular Arduino software. The Raspduino can communicate with the Raspberry Pi via the serial port or I2C port on the GPIO connector. Programming can also be done over the GPIO connector.

liudr wrote:

W. H. Heydt wrote: Well...no doubt. But in the Arduino forums he'd probably get blasted for asking which model he should get to use with a Raspberry Pi.

Not really. If you ask in the non-tech subforum then you get much useful information:

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=169417.0

I bet you can also ask under interface with software since pi is considered as a computer and you can just plug Arduino into its usb port.

Arduino UNO is the best choice in Arduino line-up for beginners.

I would strongly voice against trying out the pi GPIO first with no prior electronics experience. You may toss your pi out of the window if you make ONE wrong move. For Arduino over USB, it has a polyfuse to cut the loss when current flows too much so you may damage the chip on Arduino UNO but it is a few dollars to replace. You move on with more experience and caution, instead of moving on, and away from all this experience together. It is also easily portable to another computer, say when you do need processing power of a modern-day microprocessor. PCs don't have exposed GPIOs but have plenty USB to plug things in. I am using a Debian laptop for projects with arduino that will eventually run on pi. It's faster to compile anything with a laptop. Just my 2 cents.

Thats what I meant, the ideal direct coupling of "an arduino micro controller + shield pinheaders" to a PI, without going through the troublesome USB serial route!



All the plusses of using an arduino, including the possibility of using shields, and no silly business of using USB capacity.

Thats why the PI has a UART!!!!

You can also destroy your pi with one wrong move. With USB interface as shield, you have the polyfuse on Arduino board to take care of some mishaps. With the bare wires and wrong settings, it is fairly easy to smoke something. You may be extra careful type but that won't apply to most beginners. If someone shifts the P1 by one pin, puff. I did that before and I consider myself careful. If 5V is supplied to the SD card, puff, goes the system, more than money can replace.

The TI Launchpad with Energia would have been my first choice if it was still priced at USD 4.30. In the UK it's now GBP 7.20.

joan wrote:The TI Launchpad with Energia would have been my first choice if it was still priced at USD 4.30. In the UK it's now GBP 7.20.

Ah, I forgot about that. If they carry the spirit of open source, why not? There's also picaxe netduino, etc. that are not expensive to damage.

joan wrote:The TI Launchpad with Energia would have been my first choice if it was still priced at USD 4.30. In the UK it's now GBP 7.20.

Even with the new price (I've paid 9.99$ to get that in Portugal) it's an excellent choice. I'm really happy with the bought. Don't forget: for that price you also get a Fed-Ex shipping for free.

Btw: you can also get free samples of MSP430 chips, if (most likely) you need more for your launchpad. (2 of each model, 5 models per order and, at least, one order per month)

In the UK it's now GBP 7.20

Still £3-70 from CPC
http://cpc.farnell.com/texas-instrument ... 20Products

If someone shifts the P1 by one pin, puff. I did that before and I consider myself careful.

yep I did it once but luckily my USB battery seems to have fast short-circuit protection so it tripped and my RPi lived to fight another day

Simon

simplesi wrote:

If someone shifts the P1 by one pin, puff. I did that before and I consider myself careful.

yep I did it once but luckily my USB battery seems to have fast short-circuit protection so it tripped and my RPi lived to fight another day

Simon

Praise the polyfuse lord! IIRC, 100mA polyfuses were removed from model B to provide more current to connected devices so having that polyfuse elsewhere is very necessary.

Praise the polyfuse lord! IIRC

em - I've got all my polyfuses bypassed as I use just a single battery to power my stepper bots and it was just slowing me down

Simon

joan wrote:The TI Launchpad with Energia would have been my first choice if it was still priced at USD 4.30. In the UK it's now GBP 7.20.

The reason given by TI for increasing the price was that they didn't want to compete with their distributors yet their distributors also raised their price to $10 USD so it still cheaper to order directly from TI as shipping is free. Go figure.

Polyfuses are pretty useful. They are only a few ohms in resistance.

simplesi wrote:

In the UK it's now GBP 7.20

Still £3-70 from CPC
http://cpc.farnell.com/texas-instrument ... 20Products

It's a great buy at that price. I last bought at £3.64. It's a nice fit with the Pi.

What we (well me anyway) is some Firmata or NanPy type code so we can just bolt it on and use it to provide some cheap and easy A/D and hardware PWM

Simon

simplesi wrote:What we (well me anyway) is some Firmata or NanPy type code so we can just bolt it on and use it to provide some cheap and easy A/D and hardware PWM

Simon

Energia gives an Arduino like interface,

http://www.energia.nu/

Yep - got that - I'm after a way of reading/writing values to and from it like NanPy or Pyfirmata

Remember - I like working on an IPad from my jacuzzi on the top floor of a 5 star hotel - I haven't the skills to work on the generator in the basement like you C gurus

Simon

Give Arduino/Energia a go. It's a gentle introduction to C/C++.

liudr wrote:Polyfuses are pretty useful. They are only a few ohms in resistance.

luckily the one used in the PI (F3) isn't a "few ohms", as that would mean a several volts would fall over it when one ampere is running through it! It would mean that the PI would only receive 3 volt instead of 5.

In fact F3 is a tiny fraction of an ohm to ensure that even when fully loaded less than a tenth of a volt is lost in it!