[Cialug] atmega for what?

[Nathan Stien]

On Dec 21, 2007 11:39 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:
> I was thinking about buying an atmega168 and experimenting with arduino
> stuff. I went to ebay and searched for atmega and I see a bunch of nearly
> identical items for sale. They look like a cpu card with a surface mount
> atmega chip soldered onto it and some of the pins brought out to pads on the
> far end. Most have a serial or usb port on them. It's not clear to me what
> these could possibly be used for, but people must like them because there's
> a bunch for sale. Some auctions say "storing passwords or other sensitive
> information" and "many different computer applications."
>
> Anyone know?

Seems to me like you could use them for, well, whatever you want.  I
would say robots!

I must be misunderstanding your question.  You know what you could use
a PIC or any other embedded processor for; I would say this should be
pretty much the same use case -- a nice way to prototype or build a
hobby project without having to solder a surface mount chip.

If you want a more detailed opinion of what's for sale, you could
privately email me the ebay link. I promise not to bid against you; I
don't have that kind of free time anymore :-)

- Nathan