For the original Arduino Uno the $30 cost may be true, but there are lots of other options in the Arduino family. The Pro Mini (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11113) is only $10, being that it uses an external serial to USB adapter (such as the https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9718). The $18 cost of the adapter cable is spread across all one's projects, reducing the average. Obviously this would not be the case for any project requiring a dedicated Arduino to PC connection.
The Pro Mini would also work with a MAX232 chip and an RS-232 serial port, if that's what you have. Bare DIP chips with the Arduino bootloader can be had for $5 or less for those who want to build from scratch. Even cheaper are the raw Atmel ATMEGA328 chips, usable with the Arduino environment once flashed with the proper bootloader. Not hard to do if you have the low-cost AVR programmer from Pololu (http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1300). Bob LaJeunesse ________________________________ From: Chris Albertson <albertson.ch...@gmail.com> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement <time-nuts@febo.com> Sent: Sat, May 25, 2013 4:15:33 PM Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Good (cheap) PIC chip choice for project? I... And as you say, you need to spend $30 per project. ... _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.