Academic Hardware Products (myDAQ, myRIO)

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myrio vs arduino

Hello,



 I am trying to understand what the difference is between the capabilities of the myRIO and the Arduino UNO hardware platforms are. I currently own the Arduino UNO and it appears to be more basic in its capabilities in comparison to the myRIO unit. But besides that, I would not know what exactly that would entail. I see that the arduino UNO uses the ATmega 328 micro-controller while the myRIO seems to sport a couple powerful IC units. Are these hardware platforms intended for two totally different kinds of operation? Personally, in the future I would like to incorporate one of these units into a large model helicopter so it can have automatic hover stability with it's own sensors so the pilot can have a reduced work load and not have to give continual manual correction for the duration of the flight. I don't know if this kind of operation is considered to be a fairly complex affair for the Arduino UNO or whether the myRIO is better suited for this kind of task in terms of hardware capability.

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It's difficult to think of all of the possible comparisons, but here are some of the more obvious/fundamental differences:

 

- The myRIO runs a linux-based real-time operating system - this means you can run your LabVIEW code on it as well as it having other utilities to allow you to configure it - you can also use multithreading to have some parallel operations on the myRIO (I think?) whereas to achieve this on the Arduino is much harder (e.g. no multithreading / use of interrupts)

- The FPGA on the myRIO allows you run really high-speed data acquisition / filtering / logic / digital IO on the order of 40Mhz clock rates - this is much faster than you could perform with the Arduino.

- The myRIO has built-in WiFi - for the Arduino you need either than ethernet/WiFi shield or to use one of the Ethernet/Wifi Arduinos

- The myRIO is more powerful - it has a faster processor / more memory etc. (you can do things like plug in a USB webcam and do vision acquisition/processing)

- The myRIO has has more I/O options - analogue/digital IO, RS232/SPI/I2C etc.

- I think the resolution/DAQ for the analogue inputs/outputs on the myRIO is better/faster than the Arduino

- The Arduino is much cheaper! £20-30 versus £200+ for the myRIO!

- I also think that using LabVIEW, you can more easily debug the code than you can with Arduino - Arduino is very much debugged by trial and error whereas with LabVIEW and the interactive mode, you can probe and debug more easily.

- The myRIO also has a built-in accelerometer - a good start for an IMU!

 

I think there are lots of people that have used Arduinos for drone type applications - but I think the myRIO is pretty well suited to this sort of thing and you should be able to take advantage of the built-in onboard functionality!


LabVIEW Champion, CLA, CLED, CTD
(blog)
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From what you have said, it does seem like the myRIO is better suited for my task due to it's hardware integration. Thank you for giving me some ideas on comparisons.

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myRIO have a couple of benefits over arduino

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