Activitybot compared to Robot shield Arduino

DrPop

I probably did something stupid in hindsight, (huh, why does that seem like not the first time I've said that in my life?) :-D
When I got the ActivityBot for my daughter, I decided to get a Robot Shield bot w/ Arduino for me just to play around with and see if I liked it. We've finally got them out and messing around with them for a bit...anyway, I can see that the Propeller solution just seems more elegant in how it can run multiple iterations of code at once, i.e. multiple cogs, like "cores" (I realize I'm still on a very basic level with my limited knowledge here.)
So fast forward to this point, now we've got a Propeller Education Kit, a Propeller Professional Board when it went on a great sale, a Propeller C3, and a pile of sensors and stuff for fun.

My question: is there any reason to keep the Arduino at all? Is there anything that an Arduino can do that a Propeller can't and/or any particular reason to learn the Arduino programming just for the sake of it? Where I'm at right now, I'm kind of thinking there isn't, but I could easily be wrong. I'm tempted to Ebay or give it away to a friend and get another ActivityBot, or probably better yet, just "roll my own" mix of parts to make an upgraded robot, maybe with the C3 or some other Propeller board like Mikronauts' RoboPi.
Thanks for any feedback on that.

This is just a beginning part-time hobby, I have lots of others, but hope to throw more time at this, because I've had a lot of fun the last couple nights doing this with Kat. She digs the BlocklyProp, it's quite similar to the Hour of Code they did in school (8th grade) on Google's Blockly, so for what it's worth coming from a 13 yr old girl's perspective, she likes it way better than the "text only" IDE version. haha So, BIG thank you to everyone involved in that!

JonM

Since this is a Parallax forum, I would suspect there would be a lean toward the Parallax products, but I have both kits, as well as others, have a tendency to move back and forth between working with the Propeller and Arduino based boards and the other boards. However, I see no need to get rid of the Shield kit since you could get another Activity board and just replace the shield and Arduino with the Activity board.

My question: is there any reason to keep the Arduino at all? Is there anything that an Arduino can do that a Propeller can't and/or any particular reason to learn the Arduino programming just for the sake of it?

That is a tough question, but my answer would be yes, and there are things the Propeller can do that the Arduino based boards can not do. However, there are more boards than just the Uno in the Arduino based selection of boards including ARM based microcontrollers which are quite powerful, but it really depends on your intention. If you have no interest in getting deeper into the Arduino world or going beyond Arduino and moving to development outside of the Arduino IDE, then perhaps there is no reason to go down that path. You may have to try both and see which clicks for you.

GordonMcComb

Your daughter could benefit from having Arduino skills on her resume. The language constructions between Arduino and C for the ActivityBot are very similar, so there's little learning curve to pick it up.

It doesn't need to go on a robot. The Arduino with shield is handy prototyping setup for any other kind of experimenting, even if it's just lighting some LEDs or operating a relay or motor.

Bill's Pi-based robotics ventures are also worthwhile for learning, since getting into the Raspberry Pi involves acquiring Linux skills, maybe some Python or C, and whatever. She may not dig text-based IDEs now, but if she stays with this interest, that'll be what she uses.

DrPop

Thanks for the feedback, so it sounds like there is possibly some value in having an Arduino around just to have it, then. I'm honestly not sure how "into it" my daughter will get, she's much more interested in architecture, drawing, AutoCAD and Revit classes these days...and I realize I don't have the time or inclination to learn it all, so I kind of have to standardize on something. For example, I gave my Beaglebone Black and Raspberry Pi & Pi2 to friends when I realized the Pi3 did everything I needed, so no reason to have them all when I had friends in need, right?

Maybe Bill's Pi-Propeller boards might be my next step after I do some more low level tinkering. For myself, I'd really like to learn some more specific robotics skills, and have a LiDAR coming from Kickstarter that's going to take at least the Pi to run properly. I really like the Propeller idea, and it seems like a good option for controlling the lower level sensor interactions, etc.
I was thinking, the Pi (or other future small Linux boards) and the Propeller might be a good mix in a robotics ecosystem for me to learn over time. I'd love to be able to learn ROS someday and build a bot with that - but obviously that is an end goal for me, and a ways off at this point!

In that scenario, there isn't really any reason to use the Arduino over the Propeller for anything, is there?

GordonMcComb

It's hard to make judgement calls for other people, but I'd say that these controllers are so inexpensive these days it never hurts to have a spare. OTOH, I wouldn't keep an original Pi around unless I had a need for something fairly basic. It makes sense to recycle what you know you're unlikely to use.

The Arduino has a considerable community following with lots of example projects, which is its main feature. Just thinking about your daughter's interests, there are several projects in creating 3D mice with an Arduino and now-common sensors. For graphics applications it's always possible to combine the Arduino with Processing. As the Arduino was developed to support art and design students, there's a natural fit there.

Perhaps at this stage it's better to see what kind of projects are out there, and use the controller that project calls for. As projects get more complicated, it gets harder to port them over from one controller to the other, even if they use common languages like C.