[TriEmbed] Learning Curve

[Burr Sutter]

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Christopher Svec <christophersvec at yahoo.com
> wrote:

> Great! That leads to another question: which ecosystem?
>
> I would classify the products you've listed (Arduino, RaspPi, Spark, etc.)
> as mostly from what I call the "maker" ecosystem, meaning they're
> "batteries included" products useful in prototyping and product/experience
> exploration. And the products you've called out are definitely the top ones
> in that ecosystem.
> Another ecosystem is what I call the "engineering" ecosystem, meaning
> embedded products intended for high volume and high reliability products;
> it's anything you might want to manufacture and ship a bunch of (and not
> have them fail in the field).
>

I have been asking about the "maker" vs "engineering" distinction in other
forums.  Some folks believe there are two different universes, some think
that one is merely an extension of the other, that there is a spectrum (not
binary) of skills engineering/crafting for different needs/requirements.


>
> The "maker" and "engineering" ecosystems can both create a product that
> does the same thing, but cost, design time, scale, reliability, etc. will
> be quite different.
>
> Does that make sense?
>
Totally

I am interested in the "starting as a maker" and then "becoming a real
engineer" journey.   I feel that one can learn a lot in the
Arduino/RPi/Spark/Intel Edison world and then begin to learn ARM's
mbed...then TI/FreeScale/SiliconLabs.  What are the stepping stones (for
someone unwilling to go back to school for an electrical engineering
degree)?



>
> (See? I love questions! :-) )
>

Thank you very much for your responses! :-)


>
> -svec
>
> Chris Svec
> Senior Principal Software Engineer
> iRobot
>
>   On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 9:20 AM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> I think that is a perfectly fair question...my focus is on learning at
> this time, trying to understand the overall ecosystem.
>
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 8:20 AM, Christopher Svec <
> christophersvec at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes! I totally agree about the growth of our once-very-niche industry.
>
> Another question to consider is "what are you trying to do or accomplish
> as an end-goal?", in addition to the "where to invest time & energy to
> learn" question.
>
> You can spend the rest of your life testing & learning each new platform
> or dev board or widget that comes out - and there's nothing wrong with that
> at all! Especially if pure learning is your goal.
>
> But is that what you're after?
>
> (I'm a fan of frequently backing up and asking the big picture "why?"
> questions.)
>
> -svec
>
>
>
>   On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:05 AM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> The world of embedded microcontrollers has seen some dramatic growth (from
> my perspective) and it is tough to figure out where to invest my learning
> time & energy.
>
> I have followed this path so far:
> 1) Arduino
> 2) Raspberry Pi
> 3) Spark Core
> 4) Intel Edison (just using it as a Linux box so far)
> 5) TI SensorTag
> and played a bit with the NXP LPC1768 running mbed (http://mbed.org/)
>
> Mostly I have been simply playing with the various "developer kits" where
> my mission is on detection and connection - trying to understand what can
> be sensed and how to get the data back to the cloud.
>
> How do you all feel about mbed? Is that worthy of expending
> dozens/hundreds of hours of learning time? And if so, which of the various
> ARM/mbed-based hardware vendors are interesting to you?
>
>
>
>
>
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