My dad gave me a hand-me-down basic stamp microcontroller a while back. It had a db9 serial interface. Well, I grid working with it: keyword being tried.
This basic stamp made by parallax was powered by a 9v battery, and only the battery. The serial port used something that multiple usb2serial cables wouldn't work with, but their expensive cable worked. Because of this, I had to develop on a windows machine (no compiler for Linux at that time). And because my only hardware serial portted machine was a Linux box, had to run windows over virtualbox. My workflow went upwards of 10 minutes per try. Overall, there was major suckage, and that's not to mention the BASIC language that was forced.
I just bought an arduino UNO. I went from "hmm" to Theremin-ish device in about 30 minutes using a piezo speaker, pot, and a LDR/LED combo (and misc resistors). I played with the hardware and code seamlessly, and updating the board took 10 seconds. And I just today ordered a 17$ bluetooth shield. I'm working on a PID/motor board as well for miscellaneous motors I have.
The arduino is actually enjoyable and fun to do stuff with.
This basic stamp made by parallax was powered by a 9v battery, and only the battery. The serial port used something that multiple usb2serial cables wouldn't work with, but their expensive cable worked. Because of this, I had to develop on a windows machine (no compiler for Linux at that time). And because my only hardware serial portted machine was a Linux box, had to run windows over virtualbox. My workflow went upwards of 10 minutes per try. Overall, there was major suckage, and that's not to mention the BASIC language that was forced.
I just bought an arduino UNO. I went from "hmm" to Theremin-ish device in about 30 minutes using a piezo speaker, pot, and a LDR/LED combo (and misc resistors). I played with the hardware and code seamlessly, and updating the board took 10 seconds. And I just today ordered a 17$ bluetooth shield. I'm working on a PID/motor board as well for miscellaneous motors I have.
The arduino is actually enjoyable and fun to do stuff with.