A community for those who use Arduino boards, Arduino clone boards, Arduino adjacent boards, Arduino software, and anything intended to be used or that can be used with Arduino hardware and/or software. If you can connect it to an Arduino or program it with the Arduino IDE it is welcome here.
If you are thinking about buying your first Arduino or if you have one in your hand and don’t know where to begin this is the community for you.
Come and ask questions or show off your project. No one is too new or too experienced for this community.
Hmm. Arduino is awesome and all, but order probably matters?
So first off, lemme “sell” people on Arduino really quickly. Arduino is a 5V microcontroller, which means it works with ancient 40-year-old TTL and CMOS crap… while simultaneously having a modern IDE / ease of programming that will make most EEs blush. Its a good mix of high-support and ease of programming that’s difficult to do with other chips (ex: most Cortex-M0+ ARMs are only 3.6V or even 1.8V, becoming incompatible on a lot of the older designs still in use today…)
I’m not sure if there’s a general Electrical Engineering community in the Fediverse yet. Arduino probably is casting the net too small?
I didn’t realize how small the Fediverse was at first. I think that an Arduino community is good because the boards are so accessible and there is so much support for them. I work with non-Ardunio AVR controller boards and PIC boards which are more challenging and less accessible.
Maybe a microcontroller community would be a good idea.
Arduino is definitely the most popular microcontroller for beginners though. While you’d be missing the experts, you’d catch the beginners who are interested in getting started. Beginners search “Arduino”, while experts might search “AVR” or “Microcontrollers”.
Yes please make a microcontroller community aswell
it works with ancient 40-year-old TTL and CMOS crap
Out of curiosity, why do you think TTL and CMOS are crap?
In general, 40-year-old tech is far worse than modern chips. But the benefit of 40-year-old tech is that any old book from the last 40 years has good analysis on those designs.
At a minimum, 5V uses far more power / amperage than 3.6V, or even 1.8V designs. The 40-year-old TTL/CMOS stuff is likely through-hole as well, rather than surface mount.
But these “downsides” are purely upsides for the beginner. Large through-hole parts are easier to breadboard and experiment with. High-quality surface mounts are a pain-in-the-ass to work with as a beginner. Finally, 5V has more reliability / less noise in your analog circuit designs. So its all in all a far more forgiving environment.
But you ain’t gonna get ~150uA sleep (or less) microcontrollers on a 5V platform!! If you need low power, you gotta go to 3.6V or even 1.8V.
