[Oberon] The Oberon answer to Arduino

[Aubrey.McIntosh at Alumni.UTexas.Net]

Thanks for the time to write this.  Sobering, but perhaps necessary.  I
will go through it carefully, a time or tow.

On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Jan Verhoeven <jan at verhoeven272.nl> wrote:

> On Monday 24 December 2012 23:29:25 Aubrey.McIntosh at alumni.utexas.net
> wrote:
> > I am getting some hard questions on my KickStarter
>
> Which was to be expected. Easy money is gone down the drain since the
> americans sold out-of-control-mortgages to european banks. And they
> believed them!
>
> > why would someone buy my item instead of an Arduino.
>
> They won't. Your project breaths just one thing: hobbyist. Nobody will
> invest a penny in it.
>
> The arduino was at the right time in the right place among the right
> kind of people using the right kind of tools.
> I was there long time ago. And was too soon (and the wrong audience).
> You are too late. You cannot catch up with Arduino. Arduino is a mature
> system with a large installed user base. Websites, wiki's, third party
> suppliers, available on dealextreme. Yours is a nice idea, at most.
>
> The days of designing your own hardware to sell to others are over (for
> over a decade). Arduino was in the nick of time and within the right
> (braindead) audience.
> Have you seen this: http://www.futurlec.com/ET-PIC_Stamp.shtml
>
> ETT have a lot of affordable MCU circuits, off the shelf. These boards
> work. No need to debug the hardware (as is still the case in your
> Controls, I guess), just focus on the software.
>
> AVR : PIC = Cat : Dog
>
> > I suppose that I envision something like a programmers VOM. Something
> > to program chips via ICSP, step through simple logic sequences, safely
> > accept user programs to do innovative things.
>
> Ah, you mean http://www.futurlec.com/ET-ARM_Stamp_Board.shtml
>
> Try to beat that at USD 25. You don't want to know how ridiculously
> cheap airmail rates from Thailand are. http://www.ett.co.th/
>
> > So this brings to mind the question, should I go with a MIPS
> > processor?
>
> Go with Futurlec. They supply working boards for the price of the CPU
> plus the bare board.
>
> > compilers to the Component Pascal environment,
>
> Nope. There used to be a Mod51 Modula-2 compiler for the 8051. Not sure
> if they sold a single copy of it.
>
> > board that competes sort of laterally with the Arduino?
>
> Not in your life time. It's not very polite to say so, but if I would
> say the opposite I would be gambling with your money.
>
> > I think this could be the killer app that I have thought Oberon
> > needed for the past 20 years.
>
> The days of Oberon are over. If Oberon HAD days at all. It's a fun issue
> reading about and talking about. But nobody wants to program a
> controller in a safe way. A controller is programmed in assembler so
> you can do whatever you want.
> If things get hairy, you buy a creditcard sized PC and there Oberon may
> come in handy.
>
> > I hope you guys have an enlightened moment about this soon.  I'd love
> > to see a community project come together.
>
> Look at embedded artists. Can you come up with something like this?
> http://embeddedartists.com/products/boards/lpc11d14_qsb.php
>
> I know the answer to my question. No single developer can. Look at the
> price and the features.
>
> --
> Met vriendelijke groeten,
>
> Jan Verhoeven
> http://www.verhoeven272.nl
>
> --
> Oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems
> https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
>



-- 
Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D.
211 E. 5th St.
Morris MN 56267
(512)-348-7401
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