Nick,
I can't ay as I blame you in a lot of ways. The AVR processor is a nice small
processor if you can get over the separate program and data memory space. As
for PDEs, I don't use the Arduino development system but instead use a make
file and provide my own main. I find that there are a lot of nice class
libraries for do this and that such as the 1-wire sensors, SPI etc. C++ is
definately different on the AVR than on say a Linux or Windows box. Mostly due
to the fact that you have such a small amount of RAM. This really does take
the OO purist thinking out of most.
As for hardware, Start with the Arduino then once you get the prototype done
and working, make your board. Sparkfun has a pretty descent PCB service for
inexpensive small quantity boards. If you need higher board quantities,
www.4pcb.com has pretty descent prices. I use them for my NixieNeon Clock
(www.nixieneon.com).
-joe
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Maybe I'm just getting older and more cantankerous, but I decided, maybe
against my better judgement, to give Arduinos a try.
Hmmm. On thge plus side, they are pretty cheap - I can buy a Duemilanove
fully populated for much less than it would cost me just to have the board
made up. However, this is where I start grumbling (again...)
The /RESET pin is not properly protected (it's the only I/O pin on an AVR
without full ESD protection) and AVCC is not filtered - something that
would cost just a few cents to do, thus limiting the ADC accuracy.
As I now generally operate in high EMI environments with big ESD events
occurring maybe 1000 times a second, these simple mistakes mean mods to the
"standard" boards.
Also, my main grumble is about the POOR quality of the coding in most PDEs
- they are simply minimalist and most definitely not of production quality.
In essence, the environment is a wrapper around avr-libc & gcc-avr, a boot
loader and a somewhat dubious set of C++ class libraries which seem to be
written by people with not a huge understanding of OO concepts.
Being a "ground-up" sort of guy, I'm fighting my inclination to re-write
the PDEs and to re-do the PCBs to be rather more robust.
Bah!
Nick
