cyaiplexys wrote: > Well, since I use Debian I assumed this would be a place to ask what to > get from the Debian repo that would help in achieving my goal. But you > do make a good point. I'll have to find some Arduino forums to ask some > questions in because I'm quite sure I'll have a lot of them.
Sure Arduino forums will be useful when you have specific Arduino questions. Related to debian you have this page https://wiki.debian.org/Arduino It looks like it gives you the connection to the arduino board /dev/ttyACM0. Next CPUs - IMO you definitely need to know for which CPU you develop code https://www.arduino.cc/en/Products/Compare but it could be that the IDE hides this. Salt it with some background knowledge https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Foundations It is not a one day exercise, but it may be fun. I did AVR for a hobby. I bought few types of AVR chips a dev board, that I had to soldier myself and a programmer (total cost ~ €25,-). It took me some time to understand how the programmer is to be used with the board and how it is intended to work on linux. I guess it was two weekends that I spent reading and trying. Finally Enlightment was there and voila, I can write, compile, flash and run the MCs. Altogether it spanned over 8 months because of job and family. I think the total time spent was about 1 month though. So it depends on your level and skill. It might take months or hours, but at the end you will be an expert. It might be also worth learning some C. I am not sure how python compiles low level code, but I guess it comes with overhead. Given the amount of memory available, it might be wise to keep low footprint. Also you do not need to know a lot of details. Focus is on bitwise operations that are used when working with bits. But there are very good examples, so if you have an understanding of the concept of C language, it shouldn't be a big challenge. good luck
