How the arduino won? This is how we can kill it. - Hack a Day

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How the arduino won? This is how we can kill it.
posted Feb 11th 2011 9:00am by Caleb Kraft
filed under: arduino hacks, rants

[Phillip Torrone], has written a piece over at Make entitled “Why the Arduino won, and why it’s here to stay“. While boasting that the Arduino “won” at roughly 100k units in the wild sounds decently impressive at first, lets just ponder for a moment how many bare AVR chips there are out there in home-made projects. Kind of makes 100k sound small doesn’t it. However, if you look at their definition of the Arduino, targeting fresh and new people to microcontroller projects, that changes things a little bit. That number suddenly starts to seem a little more important if you re-word it as 100,000 new beginner hackers. Sure, they’re only tweeting toilet flushes and blinking lights, but they’re excited and they’ve tasted blood.

[Phil] goes on to talk to manufacturers on how to “beat” the Arduino. He lists features that would help push someone onto a new platform instead of the Arduino. This, is where I think we come in. We can kill the Arduino.

Not as a platform, but by removing it from the hands of people through education. Lets embrace these new hackers. Lets pull them in with open arms and show them what they can do once they have learned from their Arduino and are ready harness the power of microcontrollers without limitations. We can show them just how simple of a circuit they could use to blink their LEDs. We could show them why and how we think another chip would be better suited to their project.

One reason attributed to the popularity of the Arduino is the hostile attitude from “old school” hackers. If someone shows up and excitedly says “look, I made an RGB mood lamp with an Arduino”, we shouldn’t scream in their faces how stupid they are for such a massive overkill. We shouldn’t ignore them either. That will only send them back to the Arduino forums with their tails between their legs to do yet, another copy/paste project. We should pat them on the back and say “Hey, great job! You know I’ll bet we could make a cheap circuit with a 555 that would pull that same effect off quite nicely and it would only cost $1. Here, check out this schematic.”

Embrace them, educate them, and the Arduino will no longer be their only tool.

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* Comments [18]

tagged: arduino


Reader Comments

Very nice article, may not be full of HACK, but it brings up a good point in the hacking community. Without pointing new comers in the right directions and improving their education we have set ourselves up to see more arduino controlled self cleaning litter boxes. The litter box may be clean, but the newbies still offer up what was just cleaned out in a long line of re-packaged arduino projects, instead of fresh ideas using more appropriate components. Thats at least My 2 cents worth though.

Posted at 9:09 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by jeicrash

Sometimes it’s not about the microcontroller part of the project. I use the Arduino as a quick and dirty way to test the “rest” of my circuits. Once I have the hardware interface down and/or the logic figured out I put the proper uC in and save the Arduino for the next job.

Posted at 9:14 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by birk

It’s not a ‘kill’, it’s more of a ‘co-opt’. :)

Posted at 9:17 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by komradebob

I thing its good that hackaday don show just hacks, sometimes non hacked thinks are like a hack :). A hack a day keeps the doctor away.

Posted at 9:18 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Phil

The arduino isn’t just a board. It’s the bootloader and IDE also. I’ve prototyped things on an arduino board, then programmed a new CPU with the bootloader and code and put it into a board designed for the project. I would consider that item arduino based even if it doesn’t have an official board.

Posted at 9:18 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by js

NOT A HACK!!

I kid.. I kid… great article. This did a great job catching my attention with the “and how we can kill it” part I was like “has HAD lost their mind(s)”? … then I read on… really well written and a great point.

Posted at 9:18 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Lenny

@birk I agree completely. It drives me insane to see people’s “finished projects” which amount to nothing more than and arduino, breadboard, and a rat’s nest of wires. For me, that’s the beginning of a project, the test phase. After that I lay out the PCB and select the right uC for the job and put the whole thing in a nice enclosure, then my project is done.

Posted at 9:20 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by EmptySet35

I only bother with an Arduino if I am specifically asked to and if

For small things that must be power efficient there’s PICs, for bigger things there’s the parallax propeller. I built a full featured autopilot (the “draw a route on google earth, hit send, watch it go” sort) with it in 2007. Even have the source code on my webpage, but ofcourse it’s not trendy enough, so nobody cared…

Posted at 9:21 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by spiritplumber

@spiritplumber,
Sounds awesome, I don’t see it on your site though (no project log/source code). Email me a link!

Posted at 9:24 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Caleb Kraft

How about more “basics” articles. With an included shopping list? I am a software guy and have 0 hardware exp. I dont have many tools and even fewer parts sitting in a bin. The duino kits interest me b/c i know I can spend 50 bucks and bang out a couple beginner projects before moving on. Where is your project pack & associated tutorials?

Posted at 9:26 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by John

@John,
I think you might have misunderstood. For you, the arduino is perfect, go get one! after you’ve done some projects, you won’t have 0 hardware experience and you’ll be ready to start making your own shopping list!

Posted at 9:28 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Caleb Kraft

The point of Arduino is to give people who aren’t hackers yet a way to experiment. The Smash Putt installation in Denver this January is a good example of what Arduino can empower:

It’s not that the board or the environment are magic, it’s that they’re good enough to let people get on to the rest of the project.

Posted at 9:29 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Anne

see, im doing electronic engineering, so i have some theory hardware knowledge, and am studying PICs, but have no hardware to play with. so i have the issue of what uC, what hardware, what project, what IDE, what dev board. and i dunno where to start =(

Posted at 9:34 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by matt

for an extra dollar (gasp) i can switch out a 555 with an attiny. I bet you make up the dollar difference with the savings of additional components and pcb space required on the 555 circuit. So unless C programming makes you wet yourself the choice seems clear.

Posted at 9:36 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by 1337

I think this article is a bit mis-guided. Sure the arduino is great but why would you want to kill it off? For me it started the journey towards using drivers and timers etc. Without the arduino I’m sure a lot of us would not even of gone down the path of learning about voltages, resistance, current, ICs e.t.c.

Posted at 9:39 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Jon brod

Why do you want to kill the Arduino?

Hackers love to KISS, and the Arduino is a great way to do so.

Let’s say that I want a RGB LED to change color according to the ambient light, and I want to put it in a beautiful enclosure. I am a EE by day, and I’ve done 30 micorcontroller projects, so I am by no means a newbie, so let’s see what I have to do:

1.) Create a schematic
2.) Buy parts
3.) Buy programmer
4.) Breadboard circuit
5.) Install the programming environment
6.) Spend 2-3 hours trying to figure out why it doesn’t work (bad programmer? Bad drivers? Wrong chip? Power issues?)
7.) Spend 5 hours programming and debugging (So… disable the digital on the analog pins, disable the analog on the digital pins, what should my timing be on the ADC sampling/conversion? Configuration bits? fuse bits? what the hell?)
8.) Transfer entire circuit to a perf board
9.) Make sure it works (Another short on the MCU solder joints? Another dead part? WTF?
10.) Now I get to start the project enclosure.

OR, if I used the arduino

1.) Create a schematic (Time cut DRAMATICALLY down since the mcu, oscillator, and power supply is done)
2.) Buy parts (Not too bad, I can get the LED, light sensor and resistors at RadioShack)
…
4.) Breadboard circuit (Time cut DRASTICALLY because it is only a few parts, don’t need to worry about programming header, wires, pull-ups, ect.)
5.) Install the programming environment
6.) Spend 1 hour debugging environment (Compared to Microchip, TI, or atmel, this step is ridiculously easy.)
7.) Spend 2 hours programming and debugging
8.) Transfer entire circuit to a perf board (Only need to worry about a few components, since everything else is already done)
9.) Make sure it works (So much easier to debug since there are only a few parts)
10.) Now I get to start the project enclosure.

If you only want “Hacks” from engineers, go ahead and encourage something else. If you want to embrace mechanics, artists, and web developers IN Addition to engineers, you need something simple.

Don’t Kill the arduino. Kill the elitism that says “Too Easy, not a hack”.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Posted at 9:42 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Odin

@Jon,
I think we’re saying the same thing here. I’m appealing to the anti-arduino people saying that if they broaden the knowledge of the beginners, the arduino will no longer seem like the end-all solution. The term to “kill it” could be replaced by saying that those people will move on to more custom design AFTER they learn with their arduino.

Posted at 9:44 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Caleb Kraft

@Odin,
my article could be summed up as “for those who hate arduino, quit being jerks and start teaching. that will get you to your goal better.”. I don’t disagree with your statement at all. Actually, several of us at hackaday have arduinos for super fast prototyping.

Posted at 9:49 am on Feb 11th, 2011 by Caleb Kraft
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CGSociety - NHL/Stan Lee Superhero

CGSociety Production Coverage
RAZ

Vicon House of Moves completes NHL/Stan Lee Superhero franchise debut.
Monday, 31 January 2011

Vicon House of Moves (HOM), a leading motion capture and animation house, was contracted by Guardian Media Entertainment (GME), a joint venture between the National Hockey League (NHL) and SLG Entertainment led by Stan Lee of POW! Entertainment, to develop a short film as part of their launch efforts for new superhero franchise titled 'The Guardian Project.'

The Guardian Project Launch
The Guardians, 30 animated superheroes created to reflect NHL team attributes, were individually introduced throughout the month of January via an elaborate social media campaign promoted with broadcast and in-arena marketing support. The culmination of this campaign came during the NHL All-Star Game presented by Discover on January 30th in Raleigh, North Carolina in the form of an animated short created by Vicon House of Moves. The short played in the stadium, on both the Versus and CBC Networks and has also been posted online. The film introduces the new superheroes as they come together to battle villain Deven Dark while he attempts to take over the RBC Center stadium. A battle of good vs. evil ensues as the 30 superheroes leap into action, with the Carolina Hurricane saving the stadium fans, the Guardians and ultimately the RBC Center from utter ruin.





Each of the Guardian superheroes was designed by GME and brought to life as a CG character by HOM. Each of the superheroes derives traits from its city and team brand; the Oiler has a weapon that he plunges into the ground, the Bruin fights evil with his sonic roar, the Los Angeles King has his earthquake-inducing sword and more.

"Vicon House of Moves was a true partner from the get-go, working with us on the 3D build-out of the characters, designing what their signature moves would look like, developing story concepts, creating storyboards, doing the live action shoot, completing motion capture along with managing all of the animation, voiceovers and final edit and delivery," said Adam Baratta, Chief Creative Officer, GME. "Bringing 30 different characters to life, each of which is tied to on a highly revered NHL team, is no small task, and House of Moves was a great partner to work with on every step of this production."

Breaking Away with the Unreal Engine
Delivering this project mean't building a brand new pipeline for HOM. "The camera out of the box, is pretty unique," explains Alberto Menache, HOM visual effects supervisor and pipeline developer. "The fact is there is no actual lens in the Unreal Engine. This is solved by converting the external data into a different state, and importing to Unreal. Also the frames-per-second aren't exactly accurate, so it had to be modified as well. You don't get an alpha channel. It was like rendering a screenshot of the game you are playing; an 8-bit BMP file." Alberto set up a pipeline that would in turn generate alpha channels, z-paths, a post process at 60 to 100fps to generate ambition blur path as well.

"Everything is solvable, given the right amount of trial and error," says Alberto. "However, " chimes in Brian Rausch, vice president of production at House of Moves. "Our margin for error was pretty tight as we didn't have a tremendous amount of time to do it. We added eight shots, 48 hours before we shipped the show."

Any project with 30 different characters interacting in a mix of CG and live action environments would pose a challenge to even the largest animation house. In an effort to maximize production efficiencies, HOM used Epic Games' Unreal Engine to render this animated short for broadcast. This revolutionary application of traditional gaming technology to build high quality content for television was facilitated via HOM's proprietary workflow and a series of custom toolsets.

"Game engines give you the ability to light and render scenes interactively in real time, even when you're dealing with multiple characters. With the game engine you reduce the time that it takes to make critical creative decisions because you have the ability to pre-visualize fully rendered scenes," said Peter Krygowski, director, HOM. "We chose to produce this project using the Unreal engine not only for the reduced render time, but also the dynamic options you can have for environmental controls and effects that would not otherwise make sense for the resources at hand and the tight turnaround window we faced."

"We wrote several pieces of code to help generate custom shaders and to be able to bring virtual cameras into and out of the Unreal Engine for the purposes of this project," explained Alberto Menache. "As a result we had incredible creative flexibility, and could render out 8K frames in a matter of seconds, not to mention the savings in gear costs without the need for a multi-CPU render farm!"

In the future HOM aims to tie the Unreal Engine to the Vicon motion capture system so that clients will be able to see their recorded mo-cap performances integrated into game levels rendered in the game engine in real time.

"On a project like this, you have to think down the road of potentially extrapolating characters and environments into game assets, a television series, and flowing the CG creative elements between mediums. By building scenes in a game engine out of the gates, our options are much broader, the need to down res files from broadcast to game for example will be mitigated," explained Brian Rausch, vice president of production at House of Moves.

CG assets for the short were built using Autodesk Maya, Pixologic ZBrush and Autodesk MotionBuilder was used to retarget animation and navigate environments during motion capture sessions. HOM captured stunts and poses for each of the 30 Guardian superheroes at their 26,000 square feet of motion capture stages equipped with more than 200 Vicon T160 cameras over nine days of mo-cap shooting. The project was completed over six months with a team of creatives that started at 10 and grew to 200 at the project's peak.

The Guardian Project animated short at the NHL All-Star Game capped off a big hockey weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina that kicked off with NHL Fan Fair at the Raleigh Convention Center. In addition to the film, Vicon House of Moves designed a virtual interactive experience for The Guardian Project booth at NHL Fan Fair. The experience allows fans to don virtual reality goggles and immerse themselves into a computer-generated environment in which they get up close and personal with some of the newly introduced Guardian superheroes as they perform their signature moves.


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