Well I'm glad you asked at this time, because I've pretty much decided  
to pick up a couple of these for a specific purpose.  I agree with  
Mike here -- though I haven't yet actually use one, I've been  
researching and I can't see myself using this for any commercial  
product with any volume higher than a couple pieces, but it seems to  
be a good teaching aid.

I have 4 high-schools interning with me, and we're engineering,  
designing, and building "robotics-type" projects -- ie: projects that  
involve some mix of mechanical, electrical, and software aspects.   
After some research, this seems like a nice simplish way to get their  
feet wet with embedded control systems.  The price is low, the size is  
small (important for some of the projects we have planned), the  
development language seems to be simple enough, and there are a number  
of example projects that they can learn from.

Cheers,
-Neil.




Quoting Mike Harrison <mike@whitewing.co.uk>:

> On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:23:08 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> The "Arduino" has been around for a while now. For those who don't
>> know, the Arduino is an Atmel microcontroller on a board with an FTDI
>> USB->RS232 chip and preloaded bootloader. The system also includes
>> (but is not limited to) host software with which people write very
>> high-level code called sketches (AKA firmware to the engineers in the
>> room.)
>>
>> What function do you see the Arduino serving? It basically seems like
>> it could be a learning tool and/or a simple means to an end. There is
>> quite an active group of people using Arduinos here around Boston.
>
> The way I see it, it's a way to get people into building embedded   
> things quickly and easily - that
> has to be a good thing as some will be encouraged to explore further.
> It is also a valuable tool for teaching, and is used by many courses  
>  where electronics & computing
> is not the core sublject - design/art type stuff.
> It is also a handy tool for quickly implementing 1-off embedded control jobs.
>
> Personally I hate the 'sketch' term or anything that calls a program  
>  something 'less scary' (patch
> being another popular one) and never miss an opportunity to taunt an  
>  Arduinist about not using
> 'real' embedded hardware....
>
> In the same way that software packages to make PC programming less   
> 'scary'  have become popular
> (vvvv, max/msp, openframeworks,Processing  etc., etc.), The Arduino   
> software is doing the same for
> hardware.
>
> These days there really is little need for  someone with a hobbyist   
> or non-production need/desire to
> create sn embedded controller to get into low-level programming to   
> achieve some pretty impressive
> stuff.
>
> Of course someone has done a PIC based Arduino which is completely   
> missing the point - it's not
> about the hardware.
>
> My biggest criticism of the Arduino hardware is not having put the   
> headers on a 0.1" pitch
>   .
>
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