I’ve recently purchased an Arduino Mega 2560 R3 development board.

It’s in some ways more powerful than the Raspberry Pi as it has analogue inputs, more GPIO’s and less overhead – in that it doesn’t run Linux, it doesn’t have an IP stack, it doesn’t have HDMI output etc. Its just a microcontroller and a bunch of pins that you program using C++

I’m actually preferring it to the Pi for electronic interfacing, as “it just works” as they say in Apple land. There’s no messing around with device file permissions, drivers or a rubbish USB subsystem and iffy power supplies – you can use a 9V battery, USB power from a PC or anything that can supply 5V/500mA or more down a barrel connector!

I’ve been loving the analogue and PWN facilities – you don’t need an RC circuit or ADC to read from a LDR or pot like you would on the Pi.

Of course without a network interface you’re limited to standalone projects without either interfacing with a Pi or via serial to a PC or adding a wifi shield, but that’s what a Pi is for.

I’ve ordered the parts to make a standalone Atmega328P based device, essentially an Arduino Uno on a breadboard that no longer needs the PC for power or firmware.

I’ve been using arduino-mk package from Debian which means you can use GNU Makefiles to build your programs rather than the awful Java IDE.

The following code runs eight LED’s like a VU meter, via 3 wires to a 74HC595 shift register. An LDR (or just a pot) controls the speed the LED’s flash at via an analogue input, and the brightness is controlled via PWM.

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#include <Arduino.h>
// init vars
const int latchPin = 5;
const int clockPin = 6;
const int dataPin = 4;
const int outputEnablePin = 3;
const int potPin = 0;
byte leds = 0;
void setup()
{  
    // set pins to output
    pinMode(latchPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(dataPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(clockPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(outputEnablePin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{      
    // count up
    for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++)
    {
        // set brightness for all led's using pwm
        analogWrite(outputEnablePin, 255-15*i);
      
        // set led status using shift register
        bitSet(leds, i);
        digitalWrite(latchPin, LOW);
        shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, LSBFIRST, leds);
        digitalWrite(latchPin, HIGH);       
        
        /* pause based on pot or ldr reading
        divide by 5 for pot */
        int reading = analogRead(potPin);
        delay(reading);
    }
    
    // count down again by clearing bits
    for (int i = 7; i >= 0; i--)
    {
        analogWrite(outputEnablePin, 255-15*i);
        bitClear(leds, i);
        digitalWrite(latchPin, LOW);
        shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, LSBFIRST, leds);
        digitalWrite(latchPin, HIGH);
        int reading = analogRead(potPin);
        delay(reading);
    }
}

I’ve also updated my desktop and netbook to Debian 8 Jessie (Sid actually) with only minor problems.

  1. OpenSSH client seems to nag about missing keys, solution is to add this to ~/.ssh/config:
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LogLevel ERROR```
2. Thumbnails stopped working in Nautilus, solution:
```bash
ln -s ~/.thumbnails ~/.cache/thumbnails```
3. NFS root stopped working on the Raspbmc box, the solution was to remove the “vers=3” parameter from the nfsroot line in /boot/cmdline.txt, as it seems that the /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server script now disables NFSv3 by default. **Edit:** [fixed](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=707589).
4. I seemed to get warnings about missing Intel Microcode firmware or something on boot, solution:
```bash
aptitude install intel-microcode```
5. A lot of the libreoffice* packages were going to be removed as part of the upgrade from Wheezy to Jessie, I assume as they were automatically installed to replace OpenOffice and not manually chosen. The solution is to mark them as required using:
```bash
apt-get install libreoffice*```