This new little (or perhaps I should say “mega”) board has really excited my imagination.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the previous versions of arduinos too. It’s just that the new arduino opens up so many possibilities.
The main difference is that the normal Diecimila had only 14 ports. This is great if you just wanted to make a small project, but what happens when you wanted to do something more complicated?
I’m not great at explaining things, so let me use an example: Imagine that you wanted to build a little gadget with an LCD screen, a little joystick and 3×4 numerical keypad (for data input), an sd card (for data storage) and perhaps a gps receiver. Or a servo motor. Or something else… If you were to use a diecimila, it would be very hard to add all these devices on it. Not impossible, but very very hard for the average user.
Here we need to remember that the arduino has been successful because it makes our lives easier. Not harder! What I loved about my first arduino was that I was able to get some leds flashing with very little programming. Quick results is what gets people excited.
But then we got greedy. We needed to connect more things to our arduinos. Then things became complicated. I personally gave up on the idea of using I2C TWI etc… the arduino was meant to be easy to play with…
Then, all of a sudden the Mega version came out. Well, not “all of a sudden”… The sanguino based on the ATmega644P chip has been out for a while. Things were going towards the right direction.
As soon as I find some time, I will start working on a device I have in mind using the new arduino Mega, with an LCD screen, a keypad and an SD card. Stay tuned.
Here is an introduction of Arduino Mega by Tom Igoe, the guy who wrote the book “Making Things Talk” (if you don’t have a copy of this book, order one now!)