At 10.48 2011.11.20, you wrote: >Electron wrote: > > > >> Or, a different example may be that with a ready-to-use system you gain >> immediately but lose as an investment, with your own system you make mor= e >> efforts at the begin but then you fly. > >As a (now retired) "pro" I have four different Arduinos on the shelf in >front of me. Alongside is a small stack consisting of a homebrew PCB >with Atmega 1284 with similar (homemade) Ethernet shield, a Nokia 3310 >display/joystick board and a RTC/SD card data logging board. This has >been monitoring the house central heating, water and temperature >humidity since July. > >I have used the Arduinos previously as a quick "proof of concept" for >clients e.g. monitoring the power consumption of a remote site over GSM. >After that the real design starts - but without the client have to pay >and wait for PCB design/debugging, component purchase/delivery etc >before the real start of the project. >I think this is where their usefulness lies to the "pro". I absolutely agree on this, i.e. to develop algoritms, etc.. then these rapid development tools are very useful. But I have my own, using the same code libraries I then use for the production units, however I will stress again that for "proof of concept", development, etc.. the requirements are much different than for the final thing (tm), so if one doesn't even have made previous similar boards yet, then welcome Arduino and similar. My firs= t experiments with a PIC32 were with a Starter Kit and expansion boards, mainly because DIP versions of the PIC32 didn't exist at the time. And anyway development / evaluation of algoritms, etc.. and the final product are two very different things, with different requirements. It's analogous to the software development world, i.e. you rarely have any need (or should= ) optimize code when you're just trying to get a clue about algoritms. The risk is simply that one gets fond of Arduino and such and then doesn't develop his own system, which may be fine for small one offs or for those products developed in VERY small scale and at high price (e.g. one client who wants a system to do something specific), but if we go into mass market production, then I think it's a very bad situation to have spent years on a system which in the end will only raise your hardware and software costs, and lower your overall experience. As always, all tools are good, it's just that some are better at doing certain tasks rather than others. For educational / introduction too, for example, a system like Arduino makes more sense. But not to send a satellite in orbit. ;) Anyway, just some pointless babbling from me, sorry. I just wasted $0.02 :D >George Smith --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .