Hi all,

Based on Brian's presentation at the last meeting, I thought I'd share the materials from the course I used to teach at UCSB ("MAT 594O: Sensors and Interfaces for Media Art").

Course presentation slides (6-per-page)

Distinctions between all these new small computers:

Arduino & many relatives - Based on common Atmel (CISC) microcontrollers found in many home appliances and industrial applications; CPU includes RAM, ROM, DAC/ADC and a selection of analog and digital I/O pins; can be programmed in a simplified C where one writes a set-up function and a loop function; development tools run on desktop environments. Boards have a standardized layout of I/O p;ins, ;leading to a plethora of daughter cards ("shields") for special-purpose I/O, co-processing, etc.

IOT (Internet-of-Things) Controllers (Particle Photon et al) - very minimal & low-power systems based on ARM (RISC) processors (more powerful than the Atmels); focus on stand-alone or embedded systems with WiFi or cellular connectivity; web-based development tools; also support daughter cards.

Raspberry Pi - Based on ARM RISC processors and cellphone motherboards; much more powerful and complex, native HDMI graphics, Ethernet, etc.; native Linux ports and (C++, Python, etc.) development tools; also support daughter cards, though these are much higher-power (e.g., 16-channel audio I/O).

Questions welcome!

Stephen = W6STP