<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15370">Great! That leads to another question: which ecosystem?</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15371"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15372" dir="ltr">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.<br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14641"><span></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_18334"> 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).</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_18332"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19316" dir="ltr">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.<br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15344" class="qtdSeparateBR"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19810"><br></div><div style="" class="" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_18333">Does that make sense?</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19811" style="" class="" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19834" style="" class="" dir="ltr">(See? I love questions! :-) )<br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_20079" style="" class="" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19812" style="" class="" dir="ltr">-svec</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19813" style="" class="" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19814" style="" class="" dir="ltr">Chris Svec</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19815" style="" class="" dir="ltr">Senior Principal Software Engineer</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19829" style="" class="" dir="ltr">iRobot</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_19830" style="" class="" dir="ltr"><br></div></div><div style="display: block;" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14855" class="yahoo_quoted"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14854" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14853" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14852" dir="ltr"> <font id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_14851" face="Arial" size="2"> On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 9:20 AM, Burr Sutter <burrsutter@gmail.com> wrote:<br> </font> </div> <br><br> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15352" class="y_msg_container"><div id="yiv2009162612"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15351"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15369" dir="ltr">I think that is a perfectly fair question...my focus is on learning at this time, trying to understand the overall ecosystem. </div><div class="yiv2009162612yqt1438478683" id="yiv2009162612yqt46679"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15350" class="yiv2009162612gmail_extra"><br clear="none"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15349" class="yiv2009162612gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 8:20 AM, Christopher Svec <span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16616" dir="ltr"><<a id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16615" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:christophersvec@yahoo.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:christophersvec@yahoo.com">christophersvec@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br clear="none"><blockquote id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15348" class="yiv2009162612gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15347"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15346" style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15863">Yes! I totally agree about the growth of our once-very-niche industry.</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15865"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15864" dir="ltr">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.</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15368" dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15367" dir="ltr">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.</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15345" dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15366" dir="ltr">But is that what you're after?</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15365" dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15364" dir="ltr">(I'm a fan of frequently backing up and asking the big picture "why?" questions.)</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15363" dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15362" dir="ltr">-svec<br clear="none"></div><div><span></span></div> <br clear="none"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15353"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15359" style="display:block;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15358" style="font-family:HelveticaNeue-Light, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15357" style="font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15356"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15355" class="yiv2009162612h5"> <div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15354" dir="ltr"> <font id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15360" face="Arial" size="2"> On Wednesday, April 15, 2015 8:05 AM, Burr Sutter <<a id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15361" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:burrsutter@gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:burrsutter@gmail.com">burrsutter@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br clear="none"> </font> </div> <br clear="none"><br clear="none"> </div></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15871"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15870"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15869" class="yiv2009162612h5"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15868"><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15867" dir="ltr"><div>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. <br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16125"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16121">I have followed this path so far:</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16120">1) Arduino</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15875">2) Raspberry Pi</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16619">3) Spark Core</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16618">4) Intel Edison (just using it as a Linux box so far)</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15874">5) TI SensorTag</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15873">and played a bit with the NXP LPC1768 running mbed (<a id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_16617" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://mbed.org/">http://mbed.org/</a>)</div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15872"><br clear="none"></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429100035064_15866">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.</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div>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?</div><div><br clear="none"></div><div><br clear="none"></div><div><br clear="none"></div><div><br clear="none"></div></div></div><br clear="none"></div></div>_______________________________________________<br clear="none">Triangle, NC Embedded Computing mailing list<br clear="none"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" ymailto="mailto:TriEmbed@triembed.org" target="_blank" href="mailto:TriEmbed@triembed.org">TriEmbed@triembed.org</a><br clear="none"><a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org">http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org</a><br clear="none">TriEmbed web site: <a rel="nofollow" shape="rect" target="_blank" href="http://triembed.org/">http://TriEmbed.org</a><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"></div> </div> </div> </div></div></div></blockquote></div><br clear="none"></div></div></div></div><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></div></body></html>