Arduino Uno ?

[Lee]

Seems the local Radio Shack is -not- one of the lucky ones so they're having a GOOB sale and they have a stack of Arduino Uno units for $10.45 each.

Have any of you dyed-in-the-wool geeks played with this board?

Would a hardware noob like myself be able to do anything useful or interesting with it (or with two or more of them) -without- having to buy additional interface boards?  ...I haven't done any low level programming since I had an Ampro Littleboard 1b (with Z-80 CPU) in the 1980'sm but how hard can it be?   

[bmarkus]

Hi Lee

do not hasitate, just go there and pick few. Price is good, banggood is selling it for $13 including USB cable. For sure you will enjoy the Arduino Universe. It is really a fun if you used Z80 in the 80's. You will find tons of projects, code samples, libraries, etc.

Programming is easy in C++ with the Arduino IDE. No soldering iron, no programmers, no EPROMS, just an USB cable and a host PC, either Linux or WIndows. A great fun!

My advice is to use UECIDE instead of the original: http://uecide.org/

There are many clones around. The most interesting is the chipKIT family. These boards are based on Microchip's 32-bit PIC32 MIPS family. Boards can use Arduino shields, you can run Arduino code with no or small modification. Price is higher, but you get power:

http://chipkit.net/

Also, Microchip offers a PIC32 with preprogrammed bootloader in a 28-pin normal plastic DIP package. With only few components you can use it as a minimal chipKIT system, connecting the USB cable. It is graet, really.

http://chipkit.net/tag/prototype/

I have both Arduino and chipKIT here.

[Lee]

Thanks Bela, you "talked me into it".

Now to figure out how to make it an "educational project for the kids"...  Well, -that- didn't take much imagination. 

[bmarkus]

Great! Just an illustration what can you do with a powerful board, using RadioShack components. Play the video:

http://hackaday.com/2011/06/08/chipkit-sketch-mini-polyphonic-sampling-synth/

[Lee]

Thanks, that's neat.

Cruising around youtube for other simple arduino projects yields many instructive and interesting videos.

This is going to be fun.

[Lee]

Done.  I'm playing with one now - got the light blinking in a recognizable pattern.  That was remarkably easy.

[CentralWare]

@Lee: Sorry...  haven't been on the boards in a couple weeks; wish I could have saved you a few $

http://www.microcenter.com/product/431997/Uno_R3_MainBoard
(Local store to us, not sure about PA)

[Lee]

The local Radio Shack had electronic parts at 95% off if you bought five or more of a given item so I bought a bunch of stuff - resistors, diodes, relays, motors, potentiometers, switches, LEDs, IR receivers, IR LEDs, etc.  I missed out on a few items as there were a couple of fellows who got there ahead of me last Saturday.  The last few Arduino Unos went for $3.00 each.

It's probably indicative of the direction the remaining Radio Shacks will go that the above sort of stuff was sold off at major discount while things like the Raspberry PI were simply moved from the stores that are closing to those that are remaining open... Online places like microcenter.com will probably be the only options for discrete electronics part in the future.

[CentralWare]

LOL - MicroCenter is buying Radio Shack's electronics (component) parts!   That's where I initially heard of Tandy Corp closing a rather large number of their stores in the first place.  Glad to hear of the cheap sweep!  Take care!