Arduino questions

[Jay Vaughan]

> 1) What's the difference/advantage/pros/cons betwee the two versions
> (Diecimila, minidev board) I assume the minidev board is aimed at  
> embedded
> apps, and the other for integration with USB and a pc?
>

Mostly in the programmability and expansion -Diecimila has everything  
you need onboard to do programming and such, whereas the minidev  
requires a fair bit of wire twiddling to get started.  Out of the box  
the Diecimila is ready to go ..

> 1a) is ther an option to upgrade the MEGA8 version to the MEGA168  
> version?
>

Yup.  On the Diecimila you just pop out the old chip and put in the  
new one.

> 2) I've found some code examples but personally I'd like to see some  
> MIDI
> in/out code examples, anyone got any links?

Have a look at the stuff we did (well mostly Marius, I just answered  
his intelligent questions) on Friday:

https://whatever.metalab.at/user/kintel/Arduino/ArduinoSynth


Will be pretty obvious to you once you grok this file:
https://whatever.metalab.at/user/kintel/Arduino/ArduinoSynth/Midi.cpp

>

> 2a) It looks like it'd be possible to use the arduinos uart (RX and TX
> pins) to send/receive midi
> (http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Board?from=Tutorial.ArduinoBoard) is  
> that
> correct? but I could be wrong the page seems to imply these pins  
> aren't
> connected to the CPU.
>


Yes you can use the UART for this - the only issue is it makes  
debugging a bit difficult, because normally the UART is used as serial  
console, though Marius has done a cute hack to add logging ..

> 3) is there an option for compiling and uploading the compiled code  
> rather
> than interpreting the code 'on the fly' which is obviously slower than
> 'compiled' code.
>

Dunno what you mean by this, but the Arduino kit comes with avr-gcc  
and it just outputs compiled code to the board, which runs natively.   
I dunno where you're getting an interpreter out of all this, maybe  
this is a misunderstanding?

> 3a) is the boot loader available for download and is it easy to  
> reprogram
> if/when I kill it :-)
>


Yup!

;
--
Jay Vaughan