Today is zero day for my unboxing of the Cle035 and NerO that Bridgetek has so graciously sent me for my Road Test. I chose this particular test because A large touch screen might fit nicely into the home automation and alarm system I am in the process of designing. However, the project I plan to do for my RoadTest is a graphing component tester based on this design and software. It is a project that was already in my bucket list and I thought it would be so much cooler with a large graphing touch screen than with the smaller OLED displays I had planned to use.
I decided last night while doing my research on these products that it would be nice to write a post that I can use as a baseline to document any preconceived ideas I have about these products.
NerO and CleO are both Roman names than end with 'O' as a tie in to the Uno. Nero was a hated emperor that committed suicide after he was driven from his office and CleO-patra was a Greek Ptolemic Queen of Egypt who consorted with Julius Caesar and committed suicide after aligning with Mark Anthony against Caesar's heirs and losing. Both very tragic figures, but what is in a computer name? I have computers here named after classic cartoon characters. NerO and CleO are catchy names that tie in with the platform nicely.
Looking at the CleO page and watching the videos my first thought was "This looks awful proprietary." To use this with a genuine Arduino you need a CleO Reverse I/O adapter. But as I did more research I had to conclude that the NerO is a better design. The full 1A @ 5VDC of switching output as well as the male pins on the bottom of NerO's PCB make it an improvement over the UNO. It seems the best way to connect the Cleo to an Uno or Mega is to power the Uno/Mega and the Cleo from a separate USB power source and use jumpers for the data lines. The down side is that you can't use it as a hat unless you want to block all of your Arduino's data pins. My conclusion about all of this is Arduino would do well to adopt the design improvements that the NerO offers.
The tutorials look exciting. I think it would be worth my while to complete the relevant tutorials before I write my unboxing review and include my impressions of the material.
I guess I better quit writing and get my CleO and NerO unboxed. I should have my full unboxing report done on Tuesday or Wednesday. So until then, happy hacking......