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Can We Do It with Arduino Instead?

A project log for SnapBloks

Tools for students, makers, designers and artists to quickly demonstrate interactive concepts.

ekawahyu-susiloEkawahyu Susilo 04/22/2017 at 08:550 Comments

Of course you can! As I said in the previous project log, each Blok is basically an Arduino. So, stacking SnapBloks is like stacking Arduinos. Take a look at this equivalent Arduino circuitry (below) for the 3 Bloks example (picture not to scale):

How many Arduinos we could actually wire all together like this? Well, as many as you could, but it is a lot less cumbersome when you do it with SnapBloks, because:

  1. SnapBloks snaps onto each other with magnet, it uses magnet as conductor to deliver power and local one wire networking. So, no need to provide jumper wires.
  2. Data exchange happens only through one wire with SnapBloks, super easy, no need to think about which wire has to be connected to which pin.
  3. Reusable, no broken or bent component pins due to in and out of breadboard too often for the same sensors/actuators.
  4. Using the 3 Arduino UNOs would cost you $65++ (not including sensors/actuators), but using ESP8285 as Arduino core would cost you a lot less. ESP8285 module sold in the market is like $2-3 each. That's a lot of saving!
  5. Faster development time, snap on, snap off, and things are hot-pluggable by design.

What if I don't like ESP8285 you asked? Well, it is Arduino anyway, you won't feel the difference. But if you insisted to stick with your favorite platform or microcontroller like AVR, 8051, STM32, etc. (cause you are a hacker for example) you could actually build each Blok yourself. The next project log will talk about essential components you need to create a Blok that can communicate to the rest of SnapBloks system.

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