What is a MakerPro?
MakerPro def; a working engineer who is a maker on the side, mainly for financial gain.
The materials, tools and techniques that the MakerPro uses for their hobby will invariably bleed into their professional life. What do I mean? Well, I am talking specifically about single board computers like the Raspberry Pi and single board microcontrollers, like the Arduino UNO and Adafruit Trinket. I have several personal experiences with these boards, notably for extensive test fixtures and experimental setups. Even as I write this, a testing problem came up that I am solving with an Arduino board.
The Adafruit Trinket
Several years ago, I needed to digitally control a series of Peltier Junctions. I grabbed a PIC that I had in my parts collection, drew up a circuit, and started writing code. Besides the TEC’s, I had to read from or control switches, buttons, an LCD, and some potentiometers. It wasn’t the most complex device, but there really was a lot going on. Written in C, it didn't take terribly long to get the PIC to blink lights and start doing what I wanted, but it became a project in its own right. I would have preferred to spend less time on this side project and more time developing the overarching system that the TECs were part of.
Then shortly after the Peltier project, I grabbed one of the first Raspberry Pi to experiment with. Just after that, I received an Arduino UNO. Immediately I saw the utility of devices like Arduino Boards and Raspberry Pi’s. It seems too many professionals--myself included--have overlooked these devices, thinking they were for kids and hobbyists. Even today, many older engineers I have encountered still consider the Raspberry Pi a toy, their rationale being that because these devices are so easy to use, they must be inadequate.
The Arduino Uno
Today, I use Arduino’s and Pi’s for test fixtures, custom measurement devices, and experiments. I encouraged my co-workers to use them. I even have extra boards on hand, so that anytime I find someone using a microcontroller or an obscure development board for something, I can just hand them an Arduino or a PI. Without exception, my co-worker delights over how easy it was to get the board to output to an LCD or do whatever it was that they needed.
The Raspberry Pi 3
Pis, UNOs and Trinkets have made the transition from hobby to professional use. Not listed on any datasheet is the massive user community with endless sensors, shields (expansion boards) and accessory boards available from all kinds of third party developers. This alone is why I strongly recommend these devices for development efforts.
Are there boards available with better specifications? Maybe with more memory, more on-board functions, but consider this. If, say, your project requires an LCD, it is good to know there are off-the-shelf LCDs others have used and used extensively. When a problem does arise, you have an army of helpers all across the internet, like right here at element14.
So, how does that board with the faster CPU and Swiss Army knife array of peripherals look now? What do you say a week later when you still haven't gotten the features you need working? You could have used a Trinket coupled with an accessory board and gotten it all running in an afternoon. SBCs and SBMs are real solutions to real problems for the engineer makerpro.
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