Is Arduino easy enough? Or would some other platform be more suitable?
Arduino vs. Phidgets – Dev Time Trials article looks at the situation. Is developing on an Arduino too slow? Are Phidgets too expensive? When might you use one or the other? Article breaks down what he learned from three experimental time trials.
2 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino vs. Phidgets vs. Gadgeteer
http://hackaday.com/2015/01/12/arduino-vs-phidgets-vs-gadgeteer/
A few days ago, we saw a dev time trial between the Arduino and Phidgets, a somewhat proprietary dev board that is many times more expensive than an Arduino
The Gadgeteer has the same design philosophy as Phidgets: modular components and a unique software system -the Gadgeteer is based on .NET Micro Framework – that allows you to get up and running quickly. Unlike Phidgets, the Gadgeteer is priced competitively with the Arduino, and the mainboard is priced within an order of magnitude of a single ATMega chip.
http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gadgeteer vs Arduino vs Phidgets
http://blog.ianlee.info/2015/01/gadgeteer-vs-arduino-vs-phidgets.html
Ken introduced us to Phidgets as an alternative rapid prototyping system for hardware. His tests showed that Phidgets is indeed a faster development system than Arduino. However, as he and the readers of the article pointed out there are several negatives to going this direction including:
Cost – the Phidgets projects were considerably more expensive than the Arduino projects.
PC Tether – Phidgets must be connected to a PC at all times.
Proprietary
My favorite hardware system for rapid prototyping is Gadgeteer.
Gadgeteer also addresses the concerns numerated above with Phidgets. You will see that the project costs when using Gadgeteer was only nominally higher than that of Arduino. Considering the productivity gains, I believe it to be worth the investment.
Gadgeteer is microcontroller based. So, a PC is only needed for programming and debugging. Once that’s done, you can untether it and power it from any DC source as you can with Arduino.
Gadgeteer is open source and is based on the open source .NET Micro Framework (NETMF) project. Most of the modules and some of the mainboards are also open hardware & software.
Some readers of Ken’s article commented that Phidgets was faster but due to the cost it wouldn’t be useful for creating final projects. As you can see in the cost comparisons of the Gadgeteer & Arduino solutions, Gadgeteer solutions can make very good options for many final projects. In fact, I have consulted with a company in the past that is doing this very thing in a commercial product. Certainly, if a company’s volume gets high enough then it makes sense to convert to a custom PCB solution. But if you are a start-up with more ideas than engineers then a Gadgeteer based solution is a very viable option.