I thought it might be nice to have a thread where we can just discuss microcontrollers and embedded boards, in general. I’ll start it out here! I also just feel like writing today.
I’m currently using an Arduino Mega ADK with a BotBoarduino (on W.A.L.T.E.R. v2.0), and an Arduino Mega R3 (on my SES Rover). If I see that I need more processing power on these robots, I have a couple attractive upgrades I can do - the Arduino Due and the Teensy 3.1, both which are still microcontrollers. Both of these robots will get some form of Linux added to them at some point, which may mean they get completely new MPU/CPU boards. It’s also possible they may just get an additional Linux capable board, added to the exisiting setup, that will communicate with the existing microcontrollers.
I currently have two BotBoarduinos, an Arduino Duemilenove, an Arduino Mega ADK, an Arduino Mega R3, two Teensy 3.1 modules, a BeagleBone Black, and three Raspberry Pi boards. I know Kurte has many other boards that I don’t have now, and between us we cover the spectrum of boards pretty well. I’m going to be getting an UDOO Quad soon (Quad core scale Freescale i.MX 6 Linux processor, plus Arduino Due, plus some major magic to make it all work). I’m still tempted to get one of the octa core ODroid XU-E boards, but the $50.00 shipping cost is keeping me from getting one right now. Maybe if I order it with accessories all on the same order, that won’t be the case.
My two robots have over 5000 lines of Arduino code between them right now, but I am starting to consolidate my code base into around 3000 lines of code between them. Some of this code will be going into one or more libraries, after it has been run tested for awhile. Actually, my entire code bases are available for W.A.L.T.E.R. 2.0, and the SES Rover online in Git repos now.
I have many of the same boards. A don’t have a few of them that Dale mentions, like I don’t have any of the ADK boards. I do have some Atmega32u2/4 boards, including the Leonardo, plus the break out boards from Sparkfun, the Arduino Galileo, Chipkit Max32/Pic32, A few Propeller boards…
On the Linux front, I have 2 RPI, a BeagleBone Black (2nd one on order for new one with 4gb), an Odroid U2 and U3… Hopefully ODroid will come up with a different way to ship which cuts down on that cost. Intel Nuc which I am just finishing the update to Ubuntu 14.04.
If I put my birthday order in to RoboShop or Adafruit next month, I’ll be getting an Arduino Yun, and an Arduino Due, for sure. If I order from RobotShop, I’ll also be getting a ChipKit Max32 (without ChipKit’s Network Shield).
I’m skipping the Galileo completely, because I really think Intel messed up big time with it.
The place I order from depends on whether I need to replace the motors and encoders and/or motor controller on W.A.L.T.E.R. 2.0 or not. I am not having good luck with motors or motor controllers lately.
The last BeagleBone Black I got appears to be a Rev B. I’m going to hold off getting another one, until the Rev C boards start shipping. I’m debating whether I should update my laptop to Kubuntu 14.04 or not. This hasn’t gone well for me, in the past. I really want that octa cored goodness of the Odroid XU-E, and am going to have to look at the selection of accessories again. I’d want 64 Gb eMMC for sure, and possibly the camera, but I have no idea what else might be good to get with it.
Me too!
Without a constant flow of new things coming to me, and my robots, I don’t know what I’d do to keep busy. I just got the PITFT (2.8" touch display) and a new Raspberry Pi to go with it too. I’m going to make a new mounting adapter for the Arduino Mega R3 that’s on the SES Rover now, which will have more available space to add things… If I work it right, this should add enough space to add a Raspberry Pi or a BeagleBone Black (my preference, or any other small embedded Linux board), plus a small breadboard. If the Arduino Due will run most of my current robot code, I could even go for adding an UDOO Quad to the SES Rover. As far as single core Linux boards go, I’m heavily favoring the BeagleBone Black right now.
Yep - as you can tell, I also like the BBBk, especially now that they are going as a default to a Debian build. I have a back-order order for the Rev-C up on Sparkfun. I am glad that they updated the eMMC from 2gb to 4gb
Odroid: As I mentioned, I have the U2 and U3, which I need to get back to. I ordered them with the 16gb eMMC modules. As for the XU/XU-Lite… Looking today at Hardkernel website, it looks like these will be discontinued in Q2/3 of this year. Not sure what that means? Probably new version. Note: the XU has 8 cores (A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs) But only one set of quad cores will be running at a time. When your system does not need as much performance it uses the A7 and when it needs more it goes up to using the A15… Maybe a new version will go up to version of processor that allows all cores to work… Not sure.
Galileo - Not sure about this one. I have, maybe for some it works fine, But I have not got into it yet. As for Intel, there are quite a few SOC boards with Intel processors on them, have not picked up any of them yet, other than the NUC. Would be interesting to try one, especially one that does not need special power supply stuff…
Chipkit Max32/Uno32 - Nice boards, like Due not 5v tolerant. My main issue with them is their IDE MPIDE is stuck on Arduino 0023 compatibility (i.e. before Arduino 1.0.x or 1.5.x). A couple of years ago, when I did stuff on these boards, they were talking about getting up to 1.0 and as far as I can tell they are still not there. They finally have a new release (this month), but it still shows as 0023. Personally I think they should work to integrate it into Arduino 1.5.6. I know that there were some people awhile back that were playing with the 1.5 branch. Have not looked lately to see if any progress. Until then, my boards sit in box…
As you know I have and will continue to make purchases from Lynxmotion/Robotshop. But there are a couple of reasons why some of us do some of our purchases up on places like Adafruit
I like to support companies, like them who appear to have the Inventors spirit. They keep coming up with some cool projects.
They have better shipping options and cost. Example: today looked at Arduino Yun, if I ordered from you my options are only UPS (ground: $13, 2nd day: $26, 1day…). If I order ground, it typically takes a week sometimes longer to make it here to the west coast. If I purchase it from Adafruit, they also have UPS(ground:$10, 3day: $15, 2day: $17.50), but they also have USPS(First class: $4.25, Priority: $8.70), and priority mail usually only takes 2-3 days to arrive. I thought Robotshop had more options before?
I know. Who I get the Yun and Due from just depends on who I make next month’s part order from, and whether I need to get new motors and/or encoders for W.A.L.T.E.R. I have them in my cart with both RobotShop and Adafruit, ready to place an order with either company.
Yes, indeed! Companies like Adafruit and SparkFun create breakout boards for chips we would not otherwise have easy access too, and be able to use in our projects.
Another reason I like supporting companies like Adafruit and SparkFun, is they put a lot of time and effort into creating tutorials and videos, to help us learn about and use their products. I love the Adafruit and SparkFun tutorials! This is an extremely important thing to me when I am getting and using a sensor that’s new to me. There are often also libraries they have written for sensors. Adafruit supports the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBone with lots of code.
I know that when I buy sensors and other stuff from Adafruit and SparkFun, that there is most likely a good tutorial for the product, and Adafruit always indicates when there are, and links to these from their product pages. There is also PJRC, which is the maker of the Teensy microcontroller modules. They are a local company - about 12 miles from where I live.
I’m also ordering a lot of stuff from RobotShop now. I’m constantly finding stuff I didn’t even know existed, on the RobotShop site, and sometimes I can spend hours just browsing the store. This often leads me to adding items to my wishlist and/or shopping cart. I just got two Parallax PIR motion sensors (new to me) that I am going to add to my robots soon, and have not even taken them out of the package yet. I have a very long wishlist of things I want to get from RobotShop! I use my wishlist to keep track of interesting products I want to go back and explore further at some point.
Ahhhh, OK! I am going to have to get one of these, since I do a lot of experimentation on my Raspberry Pi boards. This Banana Pi looks like it can be a very worthwhile upgrade. It’s what I’ve been hoping the Raspberry Pi folks would do if they made a Raspberry Pi 2. I am hoping this Banana Pi “just works” as well as the Raspberry Pi does.
Yep - I know what you mean. I should have said, I like looking… The interesting thing right now is trying to figure out which things to settle on.
For many projects the Botboarduino (Atmega 328) is a sufficient. But there several other projects like Hexapods/Quads and the like where I want a bit more horsepower and functionality. Right now my go to is the Teensy 3.1. I think I now have 7 of these. chips ($17 each). Two of them are waiting for me to assemble a board for them.
But I also want to push myself and hopefully learn Linux, ROS and some other higher end things so I also desired to have one or more linux boxes. For this I started off with RPI, but I personally prefer the BeagleBone Black. These are probably sufficient for what I need, but also decided to try out Odroid as they are quad core and quite fast and have eMMC modules… Currently not planning on any others (yet).
I do have a NUC which is an Intel I3 processor, which I purchased just to experiment with. As it is Intel based, there are things like ROS which will be easier to experiment with. Also I wanted it to be experiment with PrimeSense, but not sure of the future of that as Apple bought them out and discontinued it… Mainly will use as secondary development setup, where I can get more into developing on Linux
so I too probably have enough (too many) toys to keep me busy for awhile
The PandaBoard ES will run some of ROS, but not all packages have been built for ARM yet. It’s a nice dual core board with WiFi and Bluetooth built in, but I haven’t gotten the Bluetooth to work yet. WiFi works great though!
That Banana Pi would fit on the SES Rover really well, due to it’s size. There isn’t as much room on this robot to put stuff, at least with the current chassis configuration. I also prefer the BeagleBone Black, but, if I didn’t need a lot of I/O, the Banana Pi might work well. I have a WiiMote and Nunchuk, and found a tutorial on how to control a Raspberry Pi with it, so I want to experiment with that.
I have two Teensy 3.1 modules now, and I think it would make a great super BotBoarduino solution with one of Kurte’s carrier boards. I really need to get some of those boards made and built up for myself!
I really wish the ROS folks would get the rest of ROS built for ARM boards. Some robots (like my SES Rover) just don’t have space for a mini-ITX board. I don’t have those space constraints on W.A.L.T.E.R. though.
I may have to bite the bullet, and get a mini-ITX board just to experiment with ROS on. I want ROS on a robot though! I never have too many toys!
There are several ITX boards out there now. Don’t have any, but…
ROS - Probably deserves it’s own topic(s). The current released version of ROS does not support Ubuntu 13.10 nor 14.04lts. However I believe there are beta versions for the next version Indigo (wiki.ros.org/indigo), which is scheduled to be released next month. I have 14.04 installed on NUC and will probably also install on my portable and/or desktop machine (dual boot) and try the new beta.
As for running on ARM, you can install it on several different Linux boxes, but as you mentioned not all packages build or install. More details up on (forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2096). I believe he is working on a new version for the XU and the last posting I remember reading, it sounded like he was deciding between using Ubuntu 12.11 or 14.04, maybe leaning toward 12.11 as he is writing some articles for the Odroid online monthly magazine. It also sounded like he was waiting until he successfully built all of the ROS modules. So I will be watching out to see what he comes up with.
If I were looking for a low end NUC, today I received another LinuxGizmos message (linuxgizmos.com/intel-nuc-uses-5 … it-or-sbc/) about a new low end Intel NUC, which by main desktop speeds is pretty slow, but has some interesting features, like 5w, fanless, builtin 4GB eMMC, some form of connector for I2C/PWM/GPIO and it looks like it can take input voltage anywhere from 12-19v, so can probably power directly off of 3S or 4S Lipo or 4S LifePo4…
I also just feel like writing today. 
