Phoenard, An arduino based prototyping gadget/phone

[Floyo]

A new project on kickstarter, an arduino based phone with a lot of intergrated features for prototyping circuits, and everyday use.
I had the opportunity to try it out (I walk around in the same building) and think its a nice platform for quite a few uses for both beginners
and experienced prototypers that want to get a lot of diverse projects running quickly.


check it out here and l would like to see what you think:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2080282237/phoenard-the-arduino-compatible-prototyping-gadget?ref=recommended

[Kean]

If it had 3G it would be perfect. 
I imagine this would not be very popular at airport security these days 

[Floyo]

Although it doesn't have 3g, the sim908 module does support gprs, so sending data packets over the web should still be possible, just not all that fast. And I don't think the poor atmega can handle a full 3G stream at 14 megabit  .

Airport security is another thing, it really depends on your luck what they will think of it, though nothing should really pose a problem, any phone contains most of the same stuff.

[nitro2k01]

I don't get it. They put GSM and a color display on it, and yet they crippled it by using only an 8-bit AVR. They should at least have put a low-end ARM on it.

[Floyo]

One of the first things I mentioned to the creators is "Why not ARM" and the reason they gave  is a pretty valid one, they wanted the platform to be easily accessible for beginners and switching to arm brings a quite a bit of extra work with it when just starting out, compared to an 8-bitter.
Even though stuff like mbed etc. are available their ecosystems are a lot less beginner friendly. This way the barrier to get started is put really low, but the gap between "bare-metal" and absolute beginner is a bit more manageable.

[nuhamind2]

Initially it is used for AVR Hero contest, so based on AVR it is. I know because one of the guy behind the campaign is from my country,and it's a bit of buzz here.

[nitro2k01]

Even though stuff like mbed etc. are available their ecosystems are a lot less beginner friendly. This way the barrier to get started is put really low, but the gap between "bare-metal" and absolute beginner is a bit more manageable.

It should be possible to integrate an ARM compiler into the Arduino environment, in my opinion. A bit (or maybe a lot) more work on the development side porting the compiler, libraries, bootloader etc to the platform, but if done right no more difficult to use for the end user.

[matseng]

It should be possible to integrate an ARM compiler into the Arduino environment, in my opinion. A bit (or maybe a lot) more work on the development side porting the compiler, libraries, bootloader etc to the platform, but if done right no more difficult to use for the end user.

Ah... So you mean like the Arduino Due using a Cortex-M3 ATSAM3X8E released in October 2012?  Yea, I'm sure that will be possible some day.   ;-)

[fake-name]

Even though stuff like mbed etc. are available their ecosystems are a lot less beginner friendly. This way the barrier to get started is put really low, but the gap between "bare-metal" and absolute beginner is a bit more manageable.

It should be possible to integrate an ARM compiler into the Arduino environment, in my opinion. A bit (or maybe a lot) more work on the development side porting the compiler, libraries, bootloader etc to the platform, but if done right no more difficult to use for the end user.

Hell, it's already been done 5 years ago! Take a look at the leaf-labs Maple, which came out in **2009**

http://leaflabs.com/about-maple

It uses a fork of the arduino shitty-text-editor-with-macro-button-they-call-an-IDE.

[PointyOintment]

Doesn't Teensy do that too?

And I completely agree with your characterization of the Arduino "IDE".

[fake-name]

Doesn't Teensy do that too?

And I completely agree with your characterization of the Arduino "IDE".

To be clear, it's a shitty text editor, with a macro button. If it was a nice text editor with a macro button, I'd complain a lot less. Hell, I do a fair bit of "arduino" stuff, using Sublime Text and Stino, and I'm completely happy, but that's because sublime text is a great text editor.

It's still not an IDE.