@Fade, Agreed. That is how I do it with mine too. The development is done on my main pc (a Dell laptop). When ready to do so, port it over to my Acer W3 tablet which is attached to the robot. If I still need to do a little extra editing on that tablet, for ease of use, I even have a little wireless mini keyboard I keep in the robot.

@Neogirl, Like the others have said. The EZB is the way to go and I'm a STAMP convert. I'm no fan of programming either,still the EZB has made it fun to attach a sensor or two and easily get some result with a quick click of something.

Hey, it's DJ btw the robot is jd!

Great endorsement thread everyone - I'll make sure our sales department sees this - thanks!

Wow, thanks for the replies, everybody!

@DJ Sures Sorry about the name mix-up! I always get confused about DJ/JD. lol!

I think at this point I will make the switch! Thanks again, everyone!

So, here is my viewpoint but I also have stayed out of this conversation due to having discussed it many times before and being pretty busy these days...

You can't extend Arduino or other controllers like this without having a PC attached to them. What I mean is that if you look at the purpose of an Arduino, it is to be a controller for specific items and not an overall controller. Once you attach a serial cable to it and run this to a PC, it opens up a lot more capabilities because the computer can run applications that check the status of things on the arduino, but the arduino is then just used to control those specific things (which is what an arduino is good at doing).

With the EZ-B and ARC, you essentially have the same type of thing, but a lot more. ARC handles a lot of the things that you wouldnt want to have to deal with anyway, and allows you to then focus on the things that you want to mess with. This isnt to say that you cant extend the EZB by also using Arduinos to communicate with it, but that becomes your option. Now, the power is in ARC... ARC uses the resources on a PC well and allows you to then have access to anything that your pc has access to. If it isnt in ARC and you really want it, you can develop plugins to allow ARC to do something that isnt nativly within ARC. From there, you can share what you have done with others, or work with others to make something even more amazing.

If the PC has access to the internet, the world of possibilities for your robot becomes wide open. Information is available, IoT devices are popping up everywhere, home automation is possible through many different avenues and the list goes on and on.

An arduino simply cant handle the same type of tasks that the EZ-B with ARC can. It wasn't designed to do this. It is a completely different mindset and a completely different set of possibilities simply not readily available to the Arduino platform.

I want to be clear, though... I use arduino's for my robot builds along with ARC, the EZ-B and an onboard computer. I use the devices for what they were designed to do and get very good and reliable results. The key is that you have the option to do what you want to do and expandable software that allows you to create whatever you want to create.