On 22.07.18 10:29, cyaiplexys wrote: > I think my mindset also came from my days of trying to program the WowWee > RoboSapien RS Media (ARM/Linux with Java). That was like a fully > programmable computer and robot all in one.
Then the full arduino environment will be more comfortable than raw C on bare iron. While I program AVRs, including the ATmega328P used on most arduino boards, in C and assembler, I understand that the arduino environment provides a high level programming interface which allows e.g. artists to write "sketches" to perform real-time tasks. There is quite a bit of peripheral hardware on an ATmega328P, from serial USART, through timer/counters useful for e.g. PWM motor control, through multi-channel 10 bit Analogue to digital converter. The chip datasheet is 440 pages in length, and learning to initialise and drive the on-chip paraphernalia is a non-trivial task. The arduino environment provides a library of drivers AIUI, to allow programming at the application level, rather than writing your own drivers¹. It won't necessarily give you the last microsecond of real-time performance, but it should be a low-pain introduction. (Must be some reason for its popularity, I figure.) > I don't mind using C, but am pretty bad at it. Maybe this is the time to > finally get better at it. Learning two things at once is for self-driven stoics only, at least if they're both non-trivial. Beginning with a friendly development environment and application framework, complete with examples which could be downloaded and used for tutorial purposes, avoids the pain of a lot of stuff failing not because of coding errors, but because not yet grokking the 440 pages of hardware spec left one bit in that other mode enabling register unset, so it'll never work until you find the clue in the doco. There must be an arduino ML or forum, which would be a sanity saver. Once master of that, then there's the AVRfreaks forum when the more serious C journey begins. OK, there are one or two arduinos with ARM chips, but I don't count that as original arduino. A raspberry Pi, running linux, would be a more familiar environment by the sound of it. No problem running python there, but would there be python I/O libraries? ¹ OK, drivers for e.g. 2x20 character LCDs can be found on the net, but where there's an arduino LCD "shield" (plug-in daughterboard), there'll be an arduino driver ready to use. Erik
