Or for people who are too smart to want to constantly waste their time breadboarding up the same circuit (5V regulator, crystal and caps. Pull-up resistor. Reset switch. Programming header. Vcc and Vss wires- what am I missing? Why isn't is working? OH! I connected RX/TX backwards. Duh...). I really, really don't get the elitist snobbery surrounding the Arduino. If you visit the Hackaday blog, most every Arduino based project gets trolled and flamed half to death by people who want to claim their own innate superiority over anyone who would dare use an Arduino. I always thought being a *good* engineer meant you were smart enough to build on someone else's hard work and mistakes, and to document and share YOUR work and mistakes well enough for someone else to build on them (NB "someone else" in this case can mean future/past you and in most cases does). That's all the Arduino does- it provides a lot of very clever shortcuts to working projects, both in code space and hardware space. This idea that the Arduino is for kids and beginners but that a "real" engineer wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole strikes me as, well, I don't want to say stupid, but certainly a little naive. Mike H. On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Michael Watterson wrote= : > Arduino is for people that can't do electronics or stripboard > (veroboard) or can't search for "prototype" PIC or ATmega boards. > > There is a JAL/PIC version too. > > I think the "Shield" concept is physically flawed and the Arduino is a > bit hyped. It's OK for certain kinds of beginners. > > So it's pointless for some people and good for others. > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .