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Old 04-26-2011, 12:57 PM   #109 (permalink)
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lol, there is no way in hell I'm'a let "falconuino" pass as anything but a gratuitous typo :P I was still hoping to pick a better name for the project but it sure would be nice if I could design something good enough to replace the current stale version of the "official" software... but even on the flip side of that I'd almost rather pick a new name just so I wouldn't have to keep trying to syllable-out "MPGuino" when I try to talk about it.

Plus, what is up with trying to completely strip MPGuino of the part where half its name and the entire original platform came from? MPGuino *IS* still Arduino at heart, with all the same initializations, setup, layout, etc... with the exception of the non-standard 20MHz crystal (I still don't understand why; we're at no shortage of clock cycles), it's still a stripped-down Arduino on the back of the prebuilt device I'm writing this for. Arduino is just a collection of actively-supported libraries tacked onto the back of the written code, and an easy platform for modifying it. I don't get what all the fuss is about.

Let's weigh the pros and cons. Cons first, since it seems to be top on your mind.
- Boot loader may flip out and erase itself if the chip is subjected to typically electronics-destroying amounts of electrical noise.
- Can't edit the functions/libraries that are already part of Arduino
(that's seriously all I can find)

- Enables click-and-edit moddability (what's this sh*t about "pro-modder-feature/anti-arduino"? They're kinda directly tied together: kill Arduino = modder hostile; use Arduino = modder friendly)
- Actively developed with new hardware and software features, and if any feature is changed or broken, they'll have swarms of angry users to hold them accountable
- Compatible with any hardware Arduino supports, such as the Arduino Mega
- Can be modified in exactly the same way as MPGuino is already doing... you can set and edit timers and registers all you like by just looking through the avr-libc libraries

I really, really don't get what all this anti-Arduino agenda is all about. It's the same hardware and the same code, if just a lot slimmer and neater (seriously, I haven't yet broken 10kb, and the current MPGuino code compiles to 17kb) - both to read and to compile. Can you add anything to the cons list?

I guess maybe if there were even an easy way to compile and upload a program outside Arduino, I'd be willing to give it a try. But I don't feel like:
- learning a whole new development environment (especially when the project is called "MPGuino", i.e. "MPG + Arduino")
- doing all my work on a 266MHz Pentium II laptop with a parallel port so I can use the parallel programmer cable
- potentially bricking my Arduino

... just to save <2kb on a goddamn bootloader. >.<
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