Arduino on the way

[RobA]

The development environment I use is CrossPack AVR on OS X. It's free and DIY friendly,

http://www.obdev.at/products/crosspack/index.html

This is the programmer I use,

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Atmel/ATAVRISP2/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMuk%252b7HJuOzfqFcX98cO1Rkac1lDVM1BSh4%3d

Although, like I mentioned in the above post, you can program them using the Arduino as an ISP.

One of the nice things about doing it this way is that you can use any of the AVR's from the tiny13 all the way through the big ATMega processors.

To put them on the board directly, you just need the chip, a crystal, a couple of caps, 5 volt regulator, an inductor or ferrite bead or two, and a 2x3 pin header. All the parts except the ferrite bead are available at Tayda.

[jkokura]

The Annoy-o-tron looks like the greatest device in all creation to me. I'd love to hide one when a board meeting happens. I have a terrible dislike for meetings.

Jacob

[micromegas]

I've got an arduino uno too and have done several things with it (some for work and some for fun), but after working with FPGAs I thing a "raspberry pi" has a lot more funcionalities. A friend of mine just bought one and he's assembling some robots and, although sometimes is harder to program in/out pins to drive servos and things like that, that thing can do amazing stuff.

[RobA]

I've got a Raspberry Pi too. It certainly has more power. In fact, I use it as my computer for running KiCAD on. They are great little computers. But, they suck a whole lot more power than the Arduinos or AVR's. My Raspberry Pi needs a 2 amp supply. The effect I've built using the ATtiny84a uses 17mA for the computer control section. So, it depends on how much power you need.

The other board out there is the Beagle Bone. I've got one of the first generations of these and the second generation just came out. My plans are to build a digital synth based on the Beagle Bone. They have some serious power to work with.

[BraindeadAudio]

I grabbed a few from a local shop back east that was going out of biz....been sitting on my shelf waiting for when I have time to really get into it.

[derevaun]

I've been playing with a Fluxamasynth shield on a Duemilanove board. The Fluxamasynth is basically a tone bank to which you can send notes from the Arduino, which can sense a variety of things in its physical environment, provided you connect the sensors and read them. I also banged out a motion-sensor-triggered VLC/Winamp conroller using a Digispark, which can be programmed in the Arduino environment. It's pretty awesomely sized to fit in a pedal.

I hope to someday use an Arduino to replace the rotary switch on the Honeydripper--having it change the vowel/diphthongs, between notes, at random, for example.

I took a very cool "Arduino Cult Induction" in Portland a couple years ago, and what I remember most is a quote: sometimes all you need is a prototype. The Arduino's programming structure is kind of a mess, but it lets you get something working quickly, compared to the programming hardware and coding language requirements of a more "serious" device like PIC or Propellor.

[madbean]

Arduino and my little LCD panel have arrived. I'm putting together a little proto board for it. Haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet.

I also ordered a PICKIT2 a few days ago. Might as well go all the way. The PICAXE also looks interesting. Pic programming in BASIC....plenty dumb enough for me.

[RobA]

The PIC microcontrollers are nice. I got the Microstick II to do some development with the dsPIC's. The dsPIC's have some really nice features for doing audio stuff. But, I haven't been able to find good open source compilers for the things and Microchip's pricing on their compilers make it unusable for DIY/Open Hardware projects. And, that's even with their compilers being based on gcc. It's pretty poor form on their part in my opinion. It's too bad too. Their hardware is really nice for the things I want to do.

As you get deeper into things microcontroller wise, ST has some really low-cost development boards for their ARM Cortex-Mx processors. The Cortex-M4's have some major power.

[pedalman]

working on the Beavis "Precision Ass Tornado" more to come later. i usually take the summer off (to much yard / garden stuff to do)

[aballen]

I've got a bit of experience with the arduino... here is an example from a long time ago.

http://youtu.be/A1J9Goqrdno

I find the digital stuff is pretty easy, as I'm a software architect.  I have thought of sticking a display like this(smaller) in a box with the accutronics BTSE-99... could be really cool.  I'm sure I could control it all with an arduino mini pro... alas, my eagle cad and circuit design coupled with limited spare time mean I'm not really developing stuff myself.

The arduino IDE is a great place to start, its based on "processing" which is a super simple language. 

If you want more performance, you can get direct access to things like interrupts, registers etc, simply download avr-gcc and code it all directly in C... a bit more of a challenge, since you are directly accessing registers, doing a lot of bitmath etc. 

Check out the arduino forms and the arduino playground... there is a lot of great info and examples there... like lookup tables for waveforms for example.

Also, my favorite tutorials are over at adafruit.  Limors examples/tutorials really set the bar afaik, her stuff is just so well done.  She really assumes you know nothing, and her tutorials are totally clear.

[aballen]

I had to share this one too.  Not an arduino, but it does run on an ATMEGA.  I built a shruthi myself some time back, pretty amazing if you ask me.

http://mutable-instruments.net