Posted by Chris Anderson on December 30, 2009 at 12:00am
A fun analysis by Sparkfun on the world domination of Arduino over the past couple years. More people are searching for it than even the once-dominant Microchip (maker of the PIC chips). No wonder that Sparkfun reports that: "Microchip wanted to meet with us because they were interested in creating an 'Arduino' like board using a PIC processor. Microchip finally began to understand what it means to get people early, and using their hardware, and Microchip was sensing (rightfully) that they were losing market share to this thing called Arduino. "
Arduino is like "from people" while PIC is from a company.
I still like the Microchip Brutus downloader and IDE.
It gives a sense of the board being alive from the start while Arduino boards seem like dead before you actually upload something.
My suggestion to everyone who thinks that Brand X microprocessor would be better is always just "go for it!". That's why this is open source. Start the port.
Once they realize what that actually entails, we never hear from them again ;-)
I see this is evolving as any other classic AVR vs PIC vs ARM thread, at 20% progress. Now when all the actors are in place (see thread reply count) we are waiting for one troll to start Mutual Assured Destruction.
The critical mass is here.
"In short, it would only be worth it for a 10x improvement in performance."
And now you are toast. Somebody will pop with some Moototrolla at 320MIPS with oh so perfectly open Linux. Or Parallax Propeller.
Maybe you could avoid defining decision conditions as dependent on marketing terms (like MIPS) of the companies you are not controlling ;-)
Aloha.
Seriously, as long as you use no more than 50% of resources (ram, flash) you are safe.
A little more than that and complexity and usage grows uncomfortably fast (months).
Converting ArduPilot to run another chip is not just a matter of a one-time software port. It would also require designing a new board, which is compatible with all the ArduPilot hardware, or reinventing the entire hardware ecosystem from scratch (including developing production facilities and an ecommerce arm to distribute it). And then the team would have to keep up with all the evolutions of the project, to remain compatible with ground stations and the like. It's basically several man-years of work and tens of thousands of dollars, which would only have the effect of losing all the community benefits of the Arduino project.
In short, it would only be worth it for a 10x improvement in performance.
I started with Picaxe, but found that the official forum and community was small and stagnant. Also, RevEd, who own the Picaxe bootloader, have not implemented "advanced" maths functions like sin, cos, etc. To get that capability requires an additional chip
There seems to be much more of a hobby/personal use crowd gathering, due I think caused by the DIY/Make environment as of late (of which I am one I am recent convert) but this has been the easiest way to get into electronics simply because of the overwhelmingly open and helpful communities that have evolved recently all across the internet. Arduino is one of the many tools in the Open communities, certainly one of the shining examples.
You'll learn that there is no loyalty in the semiconductor business. Someday Atmel (Arduino) will be replaced by someone else & we'll be reading about how Atmel lost market share because of its broken business model. It was that way with Zilog, Intel & Motorola. The semiconductor business seems to be dictated by something more fundamental than the cost of the software.
Having now struggled through the Microchip dev tools installation process for the second time, I think its hybrid hardware/software business model is its main problem. It's not just selling chips, but also trying to make money from its software, so they're proprietary and constantly badgering you to upgrade to expensive paid versions. The marketplace reaction the Pickit 3 fiasco (assuming that all of its failings were actually sneaky efforts to charge for firmware upgrades) is another example of this.
Atmel, on the other hand, has a much cleaner business model. It sells hardware. Its development tools are free and simple as a result.
Not surprisingly, we decided to adopt the same business model here at DIY Drones. We sell atoms and give away bits, following the marginal cost economics of the two domains. I think it's a cleaner approach, and better for product adoption. Atmel's success seems to be confirming that.
Comments
I still like the Microchip Brutus downloader and IDE.
It gives a sense of the board being alive from the start while Arduino boards seem like dead before you actually upload something.
My suggestion to everyone who thinks that Brand X microprocessor would be better is always just "go for it!". That's why this is open source. Start the port.
Once they realize what that actually entails, we never hear from them again ;-)
The critical mass is here.
"In short, it would only be worth it for a 10x improvement in performance."
And now you are toast. Somebody will pop with some Moototrolla at 320MIPS with oh so perfectly open Linux. Or Parallax Propeller.
Maybe you could avoid defining decision conditions as dependent on marketing terms (like MIPS) of the companies you are not controlling ;-)
Aloha.
Seriously, as long as you use no more than 50% of resources (ram, flash) you are safe.
A little more than that and complexity and usage grows uncomfortably fast (months).
In short, it would only be worth it for a 10x improvement in performance.
Atmel, on the other hand, has a much cleaner business model. It sells hardware. Its development tools are free and simple as a result.
Not surprisingly, we decided to adopt the same business model here at DIY Drones. We sell atoms and give away bits, following the marginal cost economics of the two domains. I think it's a cleaner approach, and better for product adoption. Atmel's success seems to be confirming that.
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