[HN Gopher] Arduino Uno R4
___________________________________________________________________
Arduino Uno R4
Author : kaycebasques
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-03-26 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.arduino.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.arduino.cc)
| josephcsible wrote:
| IMO, this is so different from the three previous UNOs that they
| should have made up a new name for it instead of calling it an
| UNO.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| DOS?
| josephcsible wrote:
| They're Italian, so they'd say "due" instead of "dos", which
| they've already used: https://docs.arduino.cc/hardware/due
|
| Ditto for "tre":
| https://docs.arduino.cc/retired/boards/arduino-tre
|
| It looks like they haven't used "quattro" themselves, but a
| popular Arduino-based robotics project has, so using it for a
| new board would be confusing.
|
| They've used "cinque" too:
| https://hackaday.com/2017/05/20/arduino-cinque-the-risc-v-
| es...
|
| "Sei" isn't used, but it'd cause confusion when people search
| for how to enable interrupts on Arduinos.
|
| So I think "sette" would be the next good candidate if they
| wanted to name it after a number.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Fair point. My thought process tends to be a bit more
| biased towards the Espanol than the Italiano.
| hd95489 wrote:
| More power but still no rtc on the baseline. The 12 bit dac is an
| improvement for pulse width modulation.
|
| Though I'll be honest I think most people use these for smart
| switches and power modulation devices so better dac is nice.
| dale_glass wrote:
| A nice improvement, but maybe too little too late?
|
| I mean, what's the point? An ESP32 has 320K SRAM, 448K Flash and
| a 240 MHz dual core CPU. And it costs peanuts. That's the
| competition to beat, and this doesn't reach it, even though the
| ESP32 came out in 2016.
|
| The Arduino has been resting on its laurels for too long, I'm
| afraid. There's long been things out there much faster and
| cheaper, and with wifi out there for a long time.
|
| EDIT: And why not just use one of these, which is already for
| sale?
|
| https://freematics.com/store/index.php?route=product/product...
| eternityforest wrote:
| Seems like the big feature is 5v compatibility. Most ESP32
| boards don't have 5v level shifting.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 5V is the special feature but it only has 20mA sink/source on
| two pins. That's not particularly friendly for typical Uno
| applications.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The original ATMEGA328p may have said in the datasheet that
| it could only do 20mA for 2 pins...
|
| But in reality, you can short all the pins to GND and then
| output high on all of them, and the chip survives
| indefinitely (although does get rather hot!).
|
| It's really rather nice and robust.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The ATmega supports 40mA on any pin. This is about the
| Renesas part.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I think I killed only one AVR in a long time tinkering.
| They even tolerate pretty severe over-voltage well,
| probably because they support EEPROM-style parallel HV
| programming.
|
| However they're also pretty expensive (especially today,
| an m328p is over five bucks nowadays), and have been for
| around ten years or more.
| eternityforest wrote:
| When would you ever need more than that in the Arduino
| ecosystem? I haven't in a rather long time. These days I
| usually don't even bother with LEDs, I'll just use an
| addressible pixel LED.
|
| Rather than a transistor I might just use a relay, mosfet,
| or motor driver module, since I can get extra features like
| short circuit protection and the ability to quickly swap
| without soldering anything, which gets exponentially more
| appealing the more times you have to repair something
| that's been made with discrete parts.
|
| The use cases where I'd be working any other way are mostly
| outside of what I'd use an Uno or similar for anyway. And I
| probably wouldn't be using 5v at all for prototyping
| something to mass produce, since 3v3 is taking over.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Does that mean it can only output 20ma at 5v? Or the
| opposite?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It means people are going to blow pins thinking they can
| drive an LED at 20mA from any output.
| ta988 wrote:
| Power supply is only up to 16V pins are 3.3V, and it is much
| more expensive. They are just different products that serve
| different users. With Arduino you get a 100% working ecosystem
| there are still a lot of incompatibilities with esp32 (although
| a lot less these days).
| Avamander wrote:
| The ESP32 and ESP8266 are significantly more complex and come
| with a bunch of downsides that make an already difficult
| venture into the "hardware land" even more so. Watchdog timeout
| or some other exception, you'll get a stacktrace that requires
| a fragile Java piece of software to decode, and it only does
| that to some extent. It's seriously not pleasant.
|
| In my anecdotal experience the ESPs are also not as robust
| against mistreatment as the AVRs are. According to the
| datasheet they shouldn't survive as much as they seem to.
|
| So while the hardware might be better, and there is always
| better hardware out there, it's sometimes worth to avoid the
| complexity.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| The ESP is compatible with the Arduino IDE. I've found it as
| easy to program as any other microcontroller. (Though I have
| encountered watchdog issues with unoptimized code)
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| As long as you stay within the guide rails and libraries
| provided by the IDE.
|
| The average user cannot debug the RTOS running on an ESP, a
| single Cortex-M4 is more complex than an AVR but still
| understandable down to bare metal by your average
| enthusiast.
| okl wrote:
| I'm not into Arduinos but I think they are not selling their
| products because they have the largest RAM or the fastest CPU
| but because of the Arduino IDE, the language and the community.
| II2II wrote:
| Yeap. My first attempts to move away from Arduino were an
| absolute nightmare, even though I treated it as a development
| board and had ditched the Arduino libraries. There was too
| much inconsistent information from the community about third-
| party STM32 boards. ESP32 boards were okay given my skill
| level, but I certainly wouldn't recommend them for novices.
| The relatively recent Pi Pico was a refreshing change due to
| the consistent documentation, but it is something where you
| have to be willing to sit down and read the documentation.
| And that is only considering programming the things, you
| still have to build something around it.
|
| I'm sure there are good alternative to the Arudino out there.
| Arduino certainly wasn't the first to market with beginner
| friendly development boards and the popularity of Arudino
| only attracted more companies to the market. Unfortunately,
| it would be difficult to figure out who to go with since
| there is so much meaningless noise out there.
| twarge wrote:
| This was also my path. I'm still surprised that stm32
| development is not more widely taught. I'm also surprised
| that products like the leaflabs maple didn't take over.
| Avamander wrote:
| The Arduino hardware abstraction layer has really been one
| of the biggest steps towards a more universal and
| interoperable set of software for bare silicon. Yet as you
| experienced, even then it wasn't enough to bridge the gap
| fully.
|
| The fact that we call other boards "Arduino alternatives"
| is partially a testament to that. (Say, instead of "AVR
| alternatives")
|
| It's certainly not perfect, always the fastest, doesn't
| expose all the features one might need, but it makes
| prototyping and portability oh so much easier. I'm glad we
| have _something_.
| dale_glass wrote:
| The ESP32 can be programmed through the Arduino IDE, using
| the exact same language. I've done that.
|
| Now the ESP32 as usually delivered is not pin or voltage
| compatible, but surely that's not that hard of a problem.
| Just make an Arduino shaped board for it, and use a level
| shifter?
|
| In fact this very thing seems to exist:
|
| https://freematics.com/store/index.php?route=product/product.
| ..
| ta988 wrote:
| So now you need to add a level shifer increase the number
| of mistakes and the risk of ruining your board. Your
| solution makes life of hobbyists less enjoyable IMHO.
|
| The GPIO are not level shifted in the board you link.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Maybe that's not the right board, but a level shifter is
| what, $1 or so? Could be on the board itself easily.
| szundi wrote:
| Please try to imagine you are a begginner again.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Of course I don't mean I expect a beginner to get a board
| made so that they can use a surface mount level shifter
| for their beginner project.
|
| My question here is why the weird approach? Why have two
| MCUs on a board, and have the one that the user interacts
| with be the technically inferior one?
|
| Why not just make a better version of the ESPRIT? Just
| add a level shifter to it, and there you go: form factor
| compatible, 5V compatible, and more powerful than
| Arduino's not yet released project. And probably cheaper
| to manufacture than the two MCU design they came up with.
|
| And yeah, you can use exactly the same IDE and API for
| the ESP32.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Renesas had been trying to get into Arduino market,
| previously with Gadget Renesas efforts. Arduino is
| expanding more into (over-bloated...) industrial control
| applications for heavy industries. There, I would assume,
| the both parties saw aligned interests to have a Renesas
| chip in the center of a new Arduino(maybe ARM might be in
| it too).
|
| Performance must have been a non-issue, they make
| everything from timers for rice cookers to custom ISA
| smartphone SoCs. It must have been just an option that is
| good enough, easily available and comfortably low-tech to
| let to an enthusiast with an SEM in his basement.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Okay, now that finally makes some sense!
|
| Though does Arduino really amount to something measurable
| to a giant like Renesas? And I presume that Arduino plans
| to keep the IDE and API, so not like 99% of people would
| be learning anything about the details of Renesas' chips.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Renesas/then-Hitachi H8 and Microchip PIC were popular in
| Japanese EE colleges and Universities. The H8 was always
| a bit too advanced, more popular in more niche robotics
| than plain EE, and must have been not too important for
| Renesas. But the latter was blown away entirely by AVR as
| Arduino came around and created a whole hobbyist
| industry.
|
| IDE and API won't be issues, it's just bare C/C++ and
| APIs are just extra standard libraries. But the
| popularity of Arduino and ATmega328P/ATmega32U, its
| expanded talent pools, etc must be somewhat tempting and
| potentially-vital-looking for Renesas, while also not too
| tempting nor threatening to make substantial changes to
| its operations and focus on over the counter chip sales.
| II2II wrote:
| I think the suggestion is to make an electrically
| compatible Uno board by incorporating the level shifters
| onto the board. The end user wouldn't have to think about
| them because they are already there.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You assume that technical specifications determine success -
| which, as Apple has shown, isn't true.
|
| Arduino is still unbeatable for community support, tutorials,
| and plug-and-play programming.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Is that true outside of the original board? I never see or
| hear about the newer arduino variants, to the point where I
| thought they semi-pivoted to become a more
| enterprise/industrial oriented offering. It might be
| selection biais, but it's not very hard to gauge "hobby"
| usage (youtubers, guides, subreddits, forums) and yet even
| the bluepill or esp32 are much more common in those circles
| than the newer arduino boards.
| numpad0 wrote:
| But can you plug an ESP32 to HEW through the official $1k ICE?
| drivers99 wrote:
| Trying to understand your statement. What do HEW and ICE
| stand for? Google isn't helping.
| II2II wrote:
| I assume they are talking about this:
|
| https://www.renesas.com/us/en/software-tool/high-
| performance...
|
| And ICE would be an In-Circuit Emulator.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| I love the ESP32 and use it as the central gateway/hub in the
| IoT solutions I develop.
|
| However the ESP32 power consumption is too high. TI has an ARM-
| based wireless sensor platform that can run for years while
| making measurements every five minutes.
| clort wrote:
| can you name it please? I'm interested in a hobbyist project
| and although I haven't got up off my arse yet, I might one
| day...
| 0xDEF wrote:
| Look at TI's CC1310 platform for wireless sensors. There
| may be newer models of it.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| ESP has more than ESP32 microcontrollers. They also have
| lower power microcontrollers and even RISC-V based
| microcontrollers.
| Avamander wrote:
| I've used a lot of them, I've used various boards in
| education. Few alternatives offer as mature and smooth
| experience that Arduino (AVR) boards do.
|
| That's not to say there aren't some great ones out there,
| but any stumbling stones as a beginner might as well be
| cliffs.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I think Arduino and ESP32 have different goals. One is more of
| an educational tool targeting children and adults to automate
| simple stuff and learning to program microcontrollers in a
| simplified way and the other is focusing on more industrial
| solutions where performance, price and flexibility matters.
|
| So I am not sure they are competitors. Like Intel and Raspberry
| Pi aren't competitors as they address very different markets.
| [deleted]
| danieldk wrote:
| _One is more of an educational tool targeting children and
| adults to automate simple stuff and learning to program
| microcontrollers in a simplified way_
|
| Ok, but then Micro:Bit is much nicer. It has a Nordic
| nRF52833, so Bluetooth LE, accelerometer, magnetometer, MEMS
| microphone, buzzer, 5x5 led matrix, tactile push buttons, and
| a touch sensor button. And it's easy to program with MakeCode
| (our daughter programmed it when she was 5 or 6) and
| MicroPython. It's easy to program, supports crocodile chips.
| And even the bundle with battery holder and batteries is
| cheaper than an Uno.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It might be true but Arduino built a brand and is better
| known.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Addressing specific markets only works if you do it uniquely
| or better. The simplified Arduino tooling works on the ESP32,
| which is also the cheaper and better option.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Good point. Are there ready made ESP32 boards good for
| education?
| adr1an wrote:
| NodeMCU ESP32
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Just google ESP on AliExpress. Tons of different dev
| boards available.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| A big disadvantage is that the esp32 has a closed source core.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| This isn't even the fastest arduino, in 2014 there was the
| edison version that had a dual core 400mhz x86.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Selling Arduinos for over $20 is utterly ridiculous when you
| cam get a Pi Pico for $4, ESP8266 for under $10, or an Arduino
| clone on AliExpress for under $4.
| dragontamer wrote:
| But an ESP32 can't turn on an 2N7000 MOSFET. 2N7000 is a 5V
| MOSFET, and is the cheapest one to boot, and one of the easiest
| to use.
| kayson wrote:
| There are bajillions of mosfets; you can certainly find
| another one that works even if it's a tiny bit more
| expensive.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Sure. So name one, that's cheap, readily available from
| many manufacturers, through hole, with 100mA+ or so Ids,
| low enough capacitance to be used with a microcontroller
| like ESP32.
|
| Most of the good MOSFETs I'm aware of are SMT only, which
| is not beginner friendly. 2N7000 through hole is extremely
| available damn near everywhere. All companies have a clone
| of the venerated, classic MOSFET. EDIT: Its also been used
| in various beginner circuits for 40 years, so you can
| pickup an old book from the library and see those 2N7000
| around and use those designs today.
|
| ----------
|
| Honestly, if you're doing through-hole on ESP32, I suggest
| using a resistor + 2N2222 BJT instead of the MOSFET. But I
| think 2N7000 is easier (fewer parts, in particular no
| resistor needed). But that's a 5V design.
|
| The 2N2222 also requires you to leak a decent amount of
| current through the Vbe / Ibe (while 2N7000 is like 1uA or
| less leak Vgs / Igs).
|
| But... 5V and 2N7000 Jellybean + throughole is really easy
| to use. Its definitely a big advantage to Arduino IMO, and
| I'm glad that they're keeping the 5V driving capability in
| this newest version.
| taylorportman wrote:
| There is an IRL series. I just got some IRL540N's
| https://learnarduinonow.com/2017/06/02/logic-level-
| mosfets-i... But I got arduinos to go with them because I
| doubt they will work directly from an esp. I think the
| big reason arduino can get away with charging so much is
| they must have some sort of educational institution
| market buying their products. The software and community
| support that comes with them is nice to have.
| [deleted]
| guenthert wrote:
| Wut? From the data sheet:
|
| "ON CHARACTERISTICS (Note 1) Gate Threshold Voltage (VDS =
| VGS, ID = 1.0 mAdc) VGS(th) 0.8 3.0 Vdc"
| dragontamer wrote:
| Yeah, Vgs(th) is 3V worst-case. That's the specification
| for 1mA of current flow Ids, which is near useless (note:
| the Arduino has traditionally been able to supply 20mA+, so
| a 1mA Ids current at 3V is completely pointless). "th" is
| Threshold after all, its not when the MOSFET is usable, its
| when it "starts to turn on".
|
| https://rocelec.widen.net/view/pdf/orqxwkxkq1/ONSM-
| S-A000354...
|
| Figure 2 on page 5 gives you an idea of the voltages you're
| supposed to use. Optimal usage of the 2N7000 requires 10V
| Vgs (for 1.5A or more), but 5V is sufficient for ~800mA
| bursts. And I expect 800mA to be enough for most beginner
| uses.
|
| 4V might be usable, but that's well beyond the capabilities
| of ESP32.
| [deleted]
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| "When it comes to hardware compatibility, pinout, voltage and
| form factor are unchanged from UNO R3, ensuring maximum
| hardware and electrical compatibility with existing shields and
| projects."
| ChancyChance wrote:
| Once I learned how to use STMCubeMX, I never went back to
| Arduino. Comparing STM boards with Arduino in terms of price,
| RAM, Flash, GPIO, analog, ... and R4 looks like Steve Buscemi
| doing the "hello fellow kids" meme. I think the big win for
| Arduino was the ecosystem and simplicity, but the big embedded
| players have invested significantly in this space with tons of
| code examples compatible with the arduino add ins (STM boards
| all have the arduino header).
|
| ESP doesn't scale. Once you start with STM, you can switch to
| much more advanced boards with ease, ESP doesn't have the
| range.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| > Once you start with STM, you can switch to much more
| advanced boards with ease, ESP doesn't have the range.
|
| And may be forced to. I _still_ can 't get H7s. ESP, nRF and
| others were barely affected by the shortage.
| wombat_trouble wrote:
| Arduino never made sense as far as technical specs go. You
| could always buy more capable and compatible AVR
| microcontrollers for one tenth the price. In the past decade,
| the disparity has gotten more dramatic as 8-bit chips have
| gotten even cheaper and even more capable.
|
| Arduino owed its success solely to building a healthy maker
| ecosystem of folks who simply defaulted to it as a platform,
| published tutorials, and promoted it through word-of-mouth.
| That's probably still there. Raspberry Pi had the same thing
| going on for it, by the way.
|
| Marketing / community building trumps technical merit in almost
| everything, and embedded computing is not an exception. I'm not
| lamenting this, it's just a fact of life.
| [deleted]
| ohazi wrote:
| What's up with the yellow rectangle?
| inamberclad wrote:
| Caught my eye too. Looks like they're hiding part of the board
| design?
| numpad0 wrote:
| From the link: > The board provides a CAN
| bus, which allows users to minimize wiring and execute
| different tasks in parallel by connecting multiple shields.
|
| From [0]: > The Renesas RA4M1 group of
| micrcontrollers (MCUs) uses the high-performance Arm(r)
| Cortex(r)-M4 core and offers a segment LCD controller and a
| capacitive touch sensing unit input for intensive HMI
| designs.
|
| Maybe a CAN bus connector, or finally a builtin user
| interface, if it's not just a power circuit? Built-in
| LCD/OLED, buttons, basic shell casing and end-user usable
| expansion connectors are growing trends among China/Shenzhen
| originating platforms like M5Stack. Arduino is still relying
| on hacky solutions for UI, which might be less appealing for
| casual users.
|
| 0: https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/microcontrollers-
| micr...
| benbojangles wrote:
| do the pinouts become 3.3v instead of arduino uno 5v?
| ur-whale wrote:
| The specs are rather underwhelming in 2023.
|
| While the Uno was a revolution in many regards, this very much
| feels like a weak attempt at catching up to an ESP32 board.
|
| Not sure why I would ever want to buy one of these given what
| already exists out there.
| [deleted]
| sho_hn wrote:
| What's missing from this announcement for me is a comparison of
| current draw, sleep states, etc.
|
| It's nice to get more powerful within a form factor and voltage
| and so on, and I realize many applications don't care about
| energy use, but increasingly the metric I care about with DIY/MCU
| gear (and my phone and my laptop is) "watt-for-watt performance
| increase".
|
| With DIY stuff especially because I build battery-powered things
| here and there, and recharging once a year instead of once a
| month is a massive reduction in nuisance for stuff around the
| house. I dream of low power compute where I can consistently get
| away with solar or kinetic energy harvesting to reduce
| operational maintenance to 0!
| dragontamer wrote:
| The microcontroller is under 20mA easily, and under 10mA
| typical use.
|
| https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/mah/renesas-ra4m1-gro...
|
| I'm a bit lothe to admit it, but for beginners... anything
| under 50mA probably doesn't matter. So that includes Teensy
| Boards, RP2040, Arduino Uno, this new Arduino, etc. etc. A
| typical LED draws 20mA for example, while WiFi will draw 100mA
| or more. Ethernet also draws 100mA+.
|
| So its very difficult for a beginner to "care" about anything
| below 50mA. Its just not something worth caring about, because
| everything else in your circuit uses so much more power.
|
| -------
|
| > With DIY stuff especially because I build battery-powered
| things here and there, and recharging once a year instead of
| once a month is a massive reduction in nuisance for stuff
| around the house. I dream of low power compute where I can
| consistently get away with solar or kinetic energy harvesting
| to reduce operational maintenance to 0!
|
| Just search on UltraLowPower (ULP) microcontrollers, such as
| the STM32L5 (or the next version: STM32U5, whenever that comes
| out). Low-power microcontrollers are measured in "microamps per
| MHz".
|
| https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32...
|
| That's 16uA / MHz active on the STM32U5. Though it fails at the
| lower end of things (~1mA or ~2mA is just the cost of the clock
| itself, so you can't drop below that in active mode. Sleep
| modes turn off the clock of course and allow the ~100nA to
| 500nA sleep modes on these ULP chips though).
|
| STM32U5 isn't alone btw. There's plenty of competitors for this
| ultra-low power field.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The LEDs on these little development boards are typically big
| sources of current draw too. Like the main CPU can go into
| deep sleep sipping microamps of power, but the power and
| other LEDs sit there with a resistor pulling tens of
| milliamps all the time.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I know all of this of course (but nevertheless thanks for
| spreading useful information) :-)
|
| What I'm saying is that I would really like this type of
| announcement to not take shape of absolute performance
| increase but at least include, if not focus, on performance-
| per-watt. I honestly don't agree with the "beginners won't
| care" - battery life is not a difficult concept and battery-
| powered projects are super common.
|
| And I think it is on Arduino to do this, since the value they
| provide as a middle-man is to package this BOM up as a
| product and explain it and their product design choices.
|
| As a sibling points out power efficiency can also vary with
| other component choices on the breakout board, e.g. the power
| delivery or included BMS. This is also something Arduino
| could optimize for and market as they productize. The MCU
| datasheet isn't everything.
| twawaaay wrote:
| 20mA is an equivalent of a typical LED. And if that is too
| much for you to power a microcontroller you do what you do
| with a normal LED -- you do not power it all the time and
| instead you use it when it is needed and put to sleep when
| it is not.
|
| So I fully agree with the parent comment that for an
| amateur once you got to this point, further improvements on
| power efficiency here is pretty much inconsequential. It is
| not like you are going to be building a watch or a sensor
| that will have to work for years on a single AAA.
|
| A 20mA microcontroller will be sufficient for pretty much
| any project an amateur can think of, power usage wise.
| sho_hn wrote:
| "Putting it to sleep" is where a lot of details matter.
| Different MCUs don't have parity on what sleep states and
| options they offer and what they mean in practice. Often
| there are complex tables where certain wakeup schemes are
| only available in certain sleep states, and to extract
| minimum idle draw you need to know what you're doing.
|
| The Arduino framework currently offers only minimal
| abstraction over this. If you use Arduino on an esp32,
| you have to reach into ESP-IDF API to dial in the
| details, e.g. set up ext1 wakeup and disable the RTC
| memory explicitly if you don't need it. Betting this is
| the same here at launch.
|
| Arduino here is introducing two versions of the same
| product with widely different BOMs and not addressing
| this matter at all.
|
| I think it'd be a great enhancement of their
| productization effort if they started explaining power
| envelope, showing improvements over time, standardized an
| API (derived from actual use cases) etc. This would add
| value over the raw chips and datasheets for their
| audience of beginners looking for ease of use. Without it
| this is just throwing some random new breakout boards
| with the same layouts over the fence - a very crowded
| market - and banking on ecosystem effects without
| evolving the ecosystem and tackling new aspects.
| twawaaay wrote:
| As an amateur EE I am looking at Arduino as an entry-
| level solution for people who want to learn a bit about
| electronics and have fun getting some results.
|
| Arduino is supposed to be simple and it is a feature, not
| a bug.
|
| If they start making it more and more complicated, it
| will just stop being simple and it will stop being what
| makes it so usable to complete noobs.
|
| There is no shortage of options if you somehow find that
| Arduino is not powerful enough to you.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Well that's sorta the point - they're making it more
| complicated here (same name, two completely different
| BOMs with different behavior). An improvement would be to
| make power management and low-power projects beginner-
| friendly (e.g. by expanding the API framework) and a
| compelling announcement would be showing that off. For me
| it's still a curious omission.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Nah, two different BOMs isn't making it more complicated.
| In the end you hold a board in your hand and have to
| figure out how to get from it to what you want.
|
| Or think in a different way: A board you have in your
| hand does not suddenly become more complicated because
| the company comes up with another board with different
| BOM. Maybe choosing the board becomes a bit more
| complicated, maybe choosing any addons for the boards
| becomes a bit more complicated (as you have to navigate
| compatibility), but using the board -- I don't think so.
| teraflop wrote:
| Just from a glance at the microcontroller datasheets, it looks
| like the RA4M1's current draw in "Software Standby" mode is
| much lower than the older ATmega328P's "power down" mode (5mA
| vs. ~50mA).
|
| But IIRC, the voltage regulators in previous Arduino _boards_
| already waste orders of magnitude more current than that, even
| while quiescent, making them not very suitable for battery-
| powered applications. So it remains to be seen if the R4 board
| improves on this.
| wombat_trouble wrote:
| I'd wager that 99% of Arduino enthusiasts (and a good
| percentage of industrial hw engineers...) do not have a habit
| of using power save modes on bare metal.
| sho_hn wrote:
| One thing that's makes the product line a bit hard to reason
| about is that they have a Wifi and a non-Wifi version using
| two very different MCUs with very different power use
| characteristics. I.e. even if you have Wifi disabled on the
| Wifi version, it'll behave very differently from the non-Wifi
| board. People looking up numbers or experiences will have a
| harder time.
|
| Add to this that afaict, the Arduino framework API currently
| doesn't provide fantastic abstractions for power/state
| management either. I had an Arduino-based esp32 project once
| and extracting best deep sleep performance definitely
| required reaching lower into ESP-IDF API instead (e.g. the
| difference between ext0 and ext1 wakeups and being able to
| shut off RTC memory in one but not the other).
|
| That means with the current framework, you have to
| potentially write non-portable code between two different
| versions of the "same Uno R4" if you want to optimize for low
| power.
|
| All of embedded is like this, really - scanning through and
| understanding a product line is basically a required skill -
| but meh, what a mess for beginners.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I could be wrong, but my reading of the post was that the
| Wi-Fi version has two MCUs - the main RA4M1, and the S3
| WiFi module. So, if you turn off wi-fi, they should be
| effectively the same board.
| mNovak wrote:
| I agree, considering that much of their marketing surrounds DIY
| automation and they have this whole IoT cloud platform now,
| they very little support for low-power operation. In this
| regard I think Adafuit and Seeed platforms do much better,
| while still being very beginner friendly.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Should I feel relieved that the main chip is not carrying scary
| prefixes and suffixes like CXD, APQ, uPD, MB, etc., or be
| absolutely horrified still that it's a Renesas built ARM?
| okl wrote:
| If you take a look at the Renesas website, you'll find that the
| product names look like this: "R7FA4M1AB3CFL#HA0". Renesas has
| a larger portfolio including, e.g., RISC-V chips. What's the
| problem?
| numpad0 wrote:
| The pain. Of messing with Japanese traditional companies.
| dark-star wrote:
| can you elaborate? I have used plenty of Renesas-powered
| devices in the past and didn't have any problems...
| 97s wrote:
| I know a lot of people above don't think it means much, but I
| built a machine from scratch(for my business equipment) with no
| knowledge of any of this stuff using Arduino and it was one of
| the most rewarding experiences I have ever had.
|
| There is something to be said about making hardware and software
| interface so easy like they have done. I would have never
| achieved this in the 3 month period as quickly as I did without
| Arduino. Super excited for this new Uno.
| far_focus wrote:
| I received an Arduino Uno starter kit from my grandfather _many_
| _many_ years ago on my birthday; it got me started coding before
| I even realized I was coding. I don 't even think I was a
| teenager? Only years later when I took my first programming
| course at college, did I realize :)
|
| Glad to see the original uno hardware updated -- I distinctly
| remember running out of flash memory, because I copied and pasted
| the blinking LED code hundreds and hundreds of times. I didn't
| know about for or while loops !
| stratosgear wrote:
| Why are parts of the board covered, in their photo? Which parts
| are under there?
| qwery wrote:
| Don't know, but it certainly jumped out at me. All I could
| think of was that some part of the design isn't finalised
| and/or hiding part of it (or an identifying mark?) in an
| attempt to delay the counterfeiters.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| For industrial stuff I tend to use the Parallax Propeller. It was
| ahead of its time when it came out, it still holds its own well
| (and the propeller 2 is a beast) and it can take a beating
| electrically.
| timmaxw wrote:
| The Uno is one of the best boards for beginners due to its huge
| ecosystem of tutorials, accessories, etc. But for a long time the
| Uno was stuck on the same 8-bit core for backwards-compatibility
| reasons, even as alternative boards offered much better specs. If
| the R4 can offer better specs without fragmenting the ecosystem,
| it will be a winner for beginners IMO.
| Yoofie wrote:
| I found it strange that they are using a ARM Renesas chip instead
| of your more well known brands such as ST Micro, NXP or
| Microchip. Renesas was fairly late on using ARM cores compared to
| the rest of the industry.
|
| Then I read the comment on CNX-Software. Renesas has invested 10
| million dollar to Arduino. [1].
|
| Now it makes sense. Gotta follow the money.
|
| [1]: https://www.renesas.com/us/en/about/press-room/renesas-
| annou...
| [deleted]
| danieldk wrote:
| These boards confuse me so much. The microcontroller is a Renesas
| RA4M1 running at 48MHz. However, the Wifi version uses an
| Espressif S3 module. However the S3 is a dual core
| microcontroller that runs up to 240 MHz. Why not base the board
| on that, or perhaps even the RISC-V version of ESP32? ESP32 has
| plenty of pins, deep sleep, etc.
|
| Is it only to keep pinout/5V compatibility with older Unos? I
| think their bigger problem is that there are a lot of good
| competitors now and their boards are severely overpriced for what
| they offer.
| asddubs wrote:
| if they weren't going to keep compatibility, there would be no
| point in going with the same form factor (and they could fix
| the awkward spacing that one of the headers has) - this is
| meant as something that will work with the various shields that
| are available.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| A low-power ARM MCU like that can run for years. There are
| wireless sensors based on TI's wireless ARM Cortex-M3 solutions
| that can run for years before needing a battery replacement.
| danieldk wrote:
| The Renesas uses 5uA/11.4uA with peripheral clocks
| disabled/enabled. The ESP32 2.5uA/10uA respectively. So it
| does even slightly better.
| leokeba wrote:
| Exactly my thought, this seems like a bunch of design
| compromises mostly towards backwards-compatibility, but I
| suspect they also did not want to make their flagship product
| reliant on a chinese MCU, hence the no-wifi variant.
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| At first I thought it was really strange that they chose a slow
| Renesas MCU, while also including an ESP32 module.
|
| Arduino has always been priced at an extreme premium which they
| justified by publishing easy-to-use software libraries, though.
|
| Maybe it's good that we'll have a widely-supported hobby board
| that uses something besides Microchip/ST/Espressif. Maybe with a
| more diverse ecosystem, we could see a decent vendor-agnostic HAL
| someday.
| qwertox wrote:
| How popular are Arduinos nowadays? I've used them years ago and
| they were great, they taught me about how to program and use the
| ATMegas and generally how to program close to hardware.
|
| But then the Raspberry Pis came along and showed me how useful
| more processing power is, and for the microcontroller stuff the
| ESP8266 and then the ESP32 showed me that having WiFi directly on
| the MCU is so much better than just an Arduino, for which I used
| to buy really long cables. There was a time when I then paired
| Arduinos with ESP8266 in order to integrate them into the
| network, but since the ESP32 I've never looked back.
|
| And yet I see new Arduinos being offered and just wonder who is
| buying them nowadays. Since I haven't informed myself for years
| on them, maybe I'm really missing out on something?
| kennywinker wrote:
| Depends on what you're building. Raspberry Pi's are hard to
| obtain, much more expensive, overkill for tons of tasks, and
| involve learning or already knowing a bunch of linux / sysadmin
| knowledge.
|
| In my experience, arduinos get picked over ESP32s mostly
| because someone's already done what you want with an arduino so
| you can leverage existing code/projects. Not every project
| needs wifi, or 240mhz, or 32bits. And in those cases, the
| beaten path is the best choice.
|
| That said, yeah, esp32 gets picked a lot even when the wifi
| isn't needed, because it's starting to be the beaten path.
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