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Old 04-21-2011, 01:41 AM   #48 (permalink)
dcb
needs more cowbell
 
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Also, I want to clarify, I don't have a problem with FFs mods, he appears to have taken some time to understand the current source (sort of necessary for an open source project to succeed). I just think it needs a unique working name for now so I am not left holding the bag. But I have seen a number of would-be contributors decide that completely rewriting it to their own ideology was "helpful", and rarely did it come with any serious testing or modder oriented features. Don't get me wrong, they mean well and are excited to show off their stuff, but they don't always come at it with an experienced modder perspective and thus the offerings are high effort-low value IMHO.

I did want to emphasize that it is the modders here that motivate me more than anything. It is the folks that do diligence in experimenting and documenting and testing rigor and sharing their methods and results that get the best value for everyone else (and even dare I say influence industry occasionaly). Given this is still a limited resource platform I think the priority features should target modders as a result and enable them to test their mods, be it grill blocks or warm air intakes or ?!?

Arduino is a great learning environment. I would encourage anyone getting started to experiment with it BUT:

I would also reiterate that arduino is only good for prototyping on a project like this, from my experience. And the mpguino is well beyond the prototype stage. For $10 you can get a real programmer Make Your Own MP3 Player that allows you to set more stable fuses, reclaim 2k of bootloader space, faster startups, ability to program eprom directly, and no depenancies on arduino. Additionally the arduino software is still in flux, so stuff breaks as everyone has different versions. Plus this code is faster than the arduino equivalent. Finally it removes a layer of "non accountability" if you do not depend on arduino and another layer of code bloat libraries. Arduino and bootloaders are not a good choice for a production environment, I have learned this once already, believe me. GCC isn't that bad. Eventually I am going to use a timer or some other resource that arduino thought they had complete dominion over and it will no longer be compatible at all (and isn't compatible with some versions already).
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Last edited by dcb; 04-21-2011 at 03:22 AM..
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