As those of you who know me know, I like building circuits and playing around with microcontrollers. For years I've been building my designs entirely on a breadboard, porting them over to permanent hardware when I'd finished with a project. But finally... just recently... I went and bought one of these:
I'd been a long-time fan of just building everything myself from scratch, and was somewhat anti-Arduino. Not because I didn't like the idea, I just felt that it simplified the process TOO much. However, now that things have changed for me here at home (can't really have a bunch of bare hardware just laying around anymore like I used to,) getting this thing has let me get back into my creative side without cluttering up my 12"x12" working space (literally.)
So far, I've learned how to connect to the Internet and use it as a web server, used it with a 16x2 character LCD display for various projects, and am currently working on a GSM project, with SMS and call support and a 2.8" TFT screen.
My only gripe so far is that if you don't buy Arduino-specific hardware, in some cases you WILL regret it. It took me a full 3 days to get the screen working correctly due to the fact that ALL of the libraries - including the ones that come with the Arduino IDE - are out of date. This was a Seeeduino 2.8" LCD.
I know I'm not the only one here that deals with this stuff, so who else loves these little things?
I'd been a long-time fan of just building everything myself from scratch, and was somewhat anti-Arduino. Not because I didn't like the idea, I just felt that it simplified the process TOO much. However, now that things have changed for me here at home (can't really have a bunch of bare hardware just laying around anymore like I used to,) getting this thing has let me get back into my creative side without cluttering up my 12"x12" working space (literally.)
So far, I've learned how to connect to the Internet and use it as a web server, used it with a 16x2 character LCD display for various projects, and am currently working on a GSM project, with SMS and call support and a 2.8" TFT screen.
My only gripe so far is that if you don't buy Arduino-specific hardware, in some cases you WILL regret it. It took me a full 3 days to get the screen working correctly due to the fact that ALL of the libraries - including the ones that come with the Arduino IDE - are out of date. This was a Seeeduino 2.8" LCD.
I know I'm not the only one here that deals with this stuff, so who else loves these little things?
