An Experimental Comparison of Arduino IDE Compatible Platforms for Digital Control and Data Acquisition Applications

This work studied different digital embedded platforms which can be programmed using Arduino IDE software and which can be used for digital control and data acquisition applications. Specifically three kind of Arduino Board (Arduino UNO, Arduino Mega y Arduino Due) and two ESP based board (ESP8622 and ESP32) are evaluated and compared. The comparison is based on the execution time of mathematical operations and a function required for data acquisition or digital control and includes (i) digital ports writing, (ii) analog signal acquisition, (iii) execution of mathematic operation in integer and float format, and (iv) the execution of the data processing code. The execution time is measured by using a methodology which is simple to implement for any other digital device. Because of each platform uses its own Arduino DUE library to generate the assembly code for its own microcontroller, the instructions adopted for both generating the actions to measure and generating the testing signals are written using Arduino IDE commands and using instructions that any entry-level user may adopt. In conclusion, from the experimental results it is observed the high difference in the execution time of the different platforms, especially between ESPx boards and Arduino boards.