Arduino 101 user comment

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MichaelMeissner

MichaelMeissner

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I saw Sparkfun is now carrying the Arduino 101/Genuino 101, which seems to be Intels latest spin at trying to enter the IOT market. It has an ARC as the embedded/Arduino side and a stripped down x86 (and the x86 software is not yet available), so in theory it should be more usable than Galileo which communicated to the pins via a slow i2c channel (forget supporting neopixels/ws2812's), but I suspect with the ARC side, you will run into all of the usual fun of people encountering AVR asm code in Arduino libraries. It comes at a lower price point than either Galileo/Edison also. I do wonder who needs this ARC/x86 combination? And the gryro on board is not as useful, given it is an Arduino Uno type form factor. Once the Raspberry Pi Zero it becomes more available again, I suspect a Raspberry Pi Zero/Teensy LC/3.2 combo would be more useful when you need higher level control.

However, I thought one of the user's comments (TM') was amusing:

Not wishing to rain on anyone’s parade, but what does this deliver over, say, a Teensy? (Apart from the acc/gyro) If Intel want to establish their IoT credentials at the low end why do they come in with an offering below FRDM boards or the Teensy in price/performance? I do like the 5V tolerant I/O: that at least is fan service. In an alternate reality, both sets of warring Italians sign over their naming rights to Paul Stoffregen and the singularity is brought forward by “n” years. In this reality we get to choose between Hillary, Trump and Intel.
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That's the issue.... Intel seems a bit lost re: how to shoehorn their powerful 1.8V MCUs into a 5V or even 3.3V maker space. None of their IOT stuff is actually delivering a better MCU for most embedded applications... they tend to be power hungry, require a lot of interfaces to make nice with most sensors out there, etc.

They do make it a lot easier to connect it to iPhones and somesuch. That may be their way in... if the ESP series doesn't get there first by offering a much cheaper alternative that takes care of all the communications and perhaps even some local control (though a dedicated MCU is likely required for serially-controlled lights and other applications where timing is important).
 
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