Allowing general avr microcontroller questions on Arduino site?

Question

Proposal: Arduino

After having worked with Arduino boards for a while, some people (re)discover plain AVR microcontrollers for various reasons, such as

• costs
• space
• energy consumption
• general cosiderations or proof of concept to use the smallest possible microcontroller for the job (sometimes, an ATtiny13 is good enough)

Once the proposal for the Arduino site succeeds, what will be the policy regarding questions rearding smaller 8bit Atmel microcontrollers in general and those not found on any Arduino board (ATmega8, the whole ATtiny family)?

Will those questions be allowed here, which would make sense to me, or referred to the electronics site?

Answer 1

It seems to me that the whole reason for the Arduino proposal is to have a site that's specifically about that particular microcontroller.

Hardware-related questions about Arduino and other AVR boards are already on-topic on Electrical Engineering. Why would another site be needed?

For questions about software and integration (which EE.SE doesn't really want), there's also the Embedded Programming and Design proposal (currently in commitment).

Answer 2

My recommendation is a little complicated. First lets divide our projects into three categories which I am going to call basic, intermediate, and advanced. Basic projects use the Arduino as a black box, it has inputs and outputs and does wonderful stuff. Questions about basic projects must by definition use standard hardware with standard software. (I'm defining standard as made by somebody else.) Intermediate projects modify the Arduino by either changing the hardware or software and should allow wider tolerances. Advanced projects are building an Arduino. I think in the specific case of advanced projects other chips should be allowed in as much as compatibility is maintained.

Answer 3

arduino is not only AVR, but actually ARM (arduino DUE and TRE) and x8086 (arduino galileo).

IMHO giving help for raw chip is ok, as it can be needed to use some specific feature not used/not flexible enought by the default aruino lib, but we also should support ONLY the chip used in official release, so we can focus on that, or this won't be Arduino anymore, not even AVR.

Answer 4

I think such a discussion is particularly on topic as long as it relates to Arduino in someway and not just "but hey, they use this chip in the arduino!" For example, I would consider an avr related question on topic if it is aimed at making the avr chip arduino compatible with regards to bootloader and programing within the arduino IDE. Eg, using or getting an attiny or atmega128 to a state to make it arduino like. I think EE would consider this to be a more appropriate area for specific arduino related material.