What do you think of Arduino Pro and which kit would you like to try out?

Not interested in any of them, Arduino as a beginners'  learning tool was great.

Arduino as a cheap simple part for rapid prototyping - good.

Arduino as an industrial product - non starter.

MK

Just been peeking at the schematics PDF for one of the control boards (it has the microcontroller board plugged onto it).

I don't understand why they would rely on tiny 0.4mm pitch connectors for the heart of it (connections between the microcontroller board and the rest of it, i.e. quite a critical connection!) for what's supposed to be presumably reliable/industrial.  Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too, for zero useful reason.

Also, there's no isolation on the serial interfaces (I didn't check the other interfaces), but would have assumed that isolation on the serial connections at least could have been useful given they don't know the precise situation customers will subject them to.

Also, on the one hand there's the suggestion of rapid prototyping, but on the other hand, it's really clear from their online store that they actually suggest it for real deployments. Pricing is unusual too; who wouldn't rather pay several times that for reliability in a real deployment. But for prototyping, it is overpriced for the kits, since no one kit (bundle) is likely to contain everything, nor be fully used, so the customer would need several of them.

shabaz said:

I don't understand why they would rely on tiny 0.4mm pitch connectors for the heart of it (connections between the microcontroller board and the rest of it, i.e. quite a critical connection!) for what's supposed to be presumably reliable/industrial.  Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too, for zero useful reason.

Could it be an application in certain environments/countries that for whatever reason have that as their requirements or what's available to them?

I wonder sometimes if it's a matter of different locations' standards or expectations in how they design.

cstanton said:

Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too

(quote is shabaz text)
The compute module provides a combination of (SMD or edge) connector + mounting holes, that allow a firm connection. I think that that one is fit for use in industry. Beyond prototyping.

The IO kit and case are flagged as "for prototyping". Those are more fit when designing software while the final hardware isn't available yet - or when developers don't have access to the final product that embeds the module.

cstanton said:

Raspberry Pi Compute Module does that too

(quote is shabaz text)
The compute module provides a combination of (SMD or edge) connector + mounting holes, that allow a firm connection. I think that that one is fit for use in industry. Beyond prototyping.

The IO kit and case are flagged as "for prototyping". Those are more fit when designing software while the final hardware isn't available yet - or when developers don't have access to the final product that embeds the module.