Any arduino coders here?

[HankMcSpank]

how can £13.50 (arduino pro mini) be too expensive for a small device with 13 i/o's and access to a growing library of pre-written code that is free to use and amend to suit your needs?

Cos it's six times more expensive than a PIC that has 13 IOs and a growing library of pre-written code :-)

(would you pay £6 for a litre of milk, if you can get the same thing for a £1 ...albeit with more basic packaging)

IMHO an arduino is fine if you just want to dabble with a bit of digital & need some of the lifting done for you ....but if you have an eye on integrating an MCU into an actual circuit - & a circuit that might have legs & be floated out into the general marketplace - then a PIC etc is the way to go....I guess it depends on your end goal, but I'd rather be paying £2.00 for a CPU solution for each of my project-ettes/challenges than £13.50.

Re the £13.50 price, Arduinos must have come down a fair in price since the time I had to mop my wall down, cos I'm sure back then they were nearer £20 a pop (so in my eyes at least, it was a no brainer back then ....£20 vs. £2)