<story><title>Why we won&apos;t be selling Genuino or Arduino any more</title><url>http://blog.pimoroni.com/why-we-wont-be-selling-genuino-arduino-any-more/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>barttenbrinke</author><text>We used to put a marble and water in an empty camera film roll canister (transparant). Freeze in the freezer and flip over. If you come back and the Marble is frozen on the bottom of the canister: don&amp;#x27;t eat anything! #lowtech</text></item><item><author>win_ini</author><text>Similar to the nerd question - could you describe your approach to the freezer monitor?  I have a cabin I don&amp;#x27;t live nearby to, and I basically can&amp;#x27;t keep anything in the freezer.  It seems to go out often enough to unfreeze then refreeze the ice cube water.&lt;p&gt;I was thinking a flat thermistor.  Then I started thinking - what if it&amp;#x27;s not the power, but the freezer itself?&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m getting into a battery to log when power is out, save that state, continue logging temps, then transmit after the wifi (assuming loss of power - although I have a UPS for the modem&amp;#x2F;wifi that will last a few hours)  is available again.   This obviously adds complexity.&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear your approach to that project....</text></item><item><author>manyxcxi</author><text>Because they&amp;#x27;re much friendlier to get started for the novice, most of the widespread examples seem extremely trivial to someone with experience.&lt;p&gt;Now- I&amp;#x27;m DEFINITELY not an expert, probably barely mediocre with the EE fundamentals, but I did take a lot of EE and some robotics at Uni to get my degree in Computer Engineering. I am nothing more than a hobbyist but some of my cooler projects have been:&lt;p&gt;- Autonomous 4WD robot&lt;p&gt;- Quadcopter&lt;p&gt;- A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build&lt;p&gt;- Used an electronic photo frame as a display to show happy birthday tweets and Facebook posts to my wife from all the friends and family on her birthday&lt;p&gt;- WiFi&amp;#x2F;Proximity garage door opener (before they were cool)&lt;p&gt;- Garage freezer monitor (after an accidental unplug that spoiled a season&amp;#x27;s worth of salmon and elk)&lt;p&gt;- A vending machine that let you pay with your work badge from &amp;#x27;points&amp;#x27; you earned (this involved a Raspbery Pi and a surface tablet as well, but the Arduino was what actually controlled the vending machine)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve done a ton of random home automation IoT gizmos, mostly just for the fun of it, and a lot of robot builds for the boys. But the reason I use a lot of Arduino is that they are pretty friendly to use, there&amp;#x27;s a lot of help when I&amp;#x27;m stuck, and I often don&amp;#x27;t need more. When I do, sometimes I just add another Arduino (or 4) and use serial or SPI communications between them. I&amp;#x27;ve got some PIC chips for stuff, and some other random chips laying around, but I get more done quickly with the Arduino.&lt;p&gt;Now, if I ever got on to an idea I wanted to make more permanent I would look elsewhere, but for a hobby, everything else provides more friction and ramp up in the few hours a month I can free up to work on stuff.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I&amp;#x27;ll add I&amp;#x27;ve gotten some ESP8266 chips&amp;#x2F;breakouts that I&amp;#x27;ve gotten more used to and I may start using them in a lot of places I&amp;#x27;ve previously used Arduino + WiFi because the WiFi breakouts use a LOT of the available I&amp;#x2F;O and are usually the most expensive part of a build. I think I have 2 or 3 that I reuse.</text></item><item><author>nathancahill</author><text>Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I&amp;#x27;ve seen are controlling lights, doors&amp;#x2F;locks and monitoring water in plants. I don&amp;#x27;t find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mcpherrinm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always just put an ice cube in a ziplock bag.  If it isn&amp;#x27;t square, that means it&amp;#x27;s melted &amp;amp; refrozen.  The marble trick seems like it&amp;#x27;s probably more sensitive, but I also don&amp;#x27;t have marbles and film canisters laying around.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why we won&apos;t be selling Genuino or Arduino any more</title><url>http://blog.pimoroni.com/why-we-wont-be-selling-genuino-arduino-any-more/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>barttenbrinke</author><text>We used to put a marble and water in an empty camera film roll canister (transparant). Freeze in the freezer and flip over. If you come back and the Marble is frozen on the bottom of the canister: don&amp;#x27;t eat anything! #lowtech</text></item><item><author>win_ini</author><text>Similar to the nerd question - could you describe your approach to the freezer monitor?  I have a cabin I don&amp;#x27;t live nearby to, and I basically can&amp;#x27;t keep anything in the freezer.  It seems to go out often enough to unfreeze then refreeze the ice cube water.&lt;p&gt;I was thinking a flat thermistor.  Then I started thinking - what if it&amp;#x27;s not the power, but the freezer itself?&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m getting into a battery to log when power is out, save that state, continue logging temps, then transmit after the wifi (assuming loss of power - although I have a UPS for the modem&amp;#x2F;wifi that will last a few hours)  is available again.   This obviously adds complexity.&lt;p&gt;Would love to hear your approach to that project....</text></item><item><author>manyxcxi</author><text>Because they&amp;#x27;re much friendlier to get started for the novice, most of the widespread examples seem extremely trivial to someone with experience.&lt;p&gt;Now- I&amp;#x27;m DEFINITELY not an expert, probably barely mediocre with the EE fundamentals, but I did take a lot of EE and some robotics at Uni to get my degree in Computer Engineering. I am nothing more than a hobbyist but some of my cooler projects have been:&lt;p&gt;- Autonomous 4WD robot&lt;p&gt;- Quadcopter&lt;p&gt;- A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build&lt;p&gt;- Used an electronic photo frame as a display to show happy birthday tweets and Facebook posts to my wife from all the friends and family on her birthday&lt;p&gt;- WiFi&amp;#x2F;Proximity garage door opener (before they were cool)&lt;p&gt;- Garage freezer monitor (after an accidental unplug that spoiled a season&amp;#x27;s worth of salmon and elk)&lt;p&gt;- A vending machine that let you pay with your work badge from &amp;#x27;points&amp;#x27; you earned (this involved a Raspbery Pi and a surface tablet as well, but the Arduino was what actually controlled the vending machine)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve done a ton of random home automation IoT gizmos, mostly just for the fun of it, and a lot of robot builds for the boys. But the reason I use a lot of Arduino is that they are pretty friendly to use, there&amp;#x27;s a lot of help when I&amp;#x27;m stuck, and I often don&amp;#x27;t need more. When I do, sometimes I just add another Arduino (or 4) and use serial or SPI communications between them. I&amp;#x27;ve got some PIC chips for stuff, and some other random chips laying around, but I get more done quickly with the Arduino.&lt;p&gt;Now, if I ever got on to an idea I wanted to make more permanent I would look elsewhere, but for a hobby, everything else provides more friction and ramp up in the few hours a month I can free up to work on stuff.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I&amp;#x27;ll add I&amp;#x27;ve gotten some ESP8266 chips&amp;#x2F;breakouts that I&amp;#x27;ve gotten more used to and I may start using them in a lot of places I&amp;#x27;ve previously used Arduino + WiFi because the WiFi breakouts use a LOT of the available I&amp;#x2F;O and are usually the most expensive part of a build. I think I have 2 or 3 that I reuse.</text></item><item><author>nathancahill</author><text>Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I&amp;#x27;ve seen are controlling lights, doors&amp;#x2F;locks and monitoring water in plants. I don&amp;#x27;t find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>manyxcxi</author><text>This is a tip EVERYONE should know and I still do this! I use a half filled bottle of water, a small rock, and mark safe&amp;#x2F;not safe so anyone who&amp;#x27;s not me knows which way it should be.&lt;p&gt;Pretty sure it was my great-grandpa who taught me that.</text></comment>