Pinguino vs Arduino

What is Pinguino
Pinguino is an open source set of tools. The goal of this project is to build a real USB development board. Due to the many applications designed with Arduino ([www.arduino.cc]) and based on an ATMEL micro-controller, the idea was to build a compatible board and language using the more powerful Microchip line of PIC controller. Newer PIC controllers have a built in USB port.

Why Use Pinguino
The Arduino is built with an FTDI chip, the serial port is shared between the bootloader (chip programming)and the UART (serial terminal output) application. Another problem is the Arduino IDE was written in JAVA. For example, the JAVA C libraries require 4k of code for an empty main loop. for (J = 0;J < 10; J++) { // do nothing }

The Pinguino is based on Python and the SDCC compiler. Before the compilation, a pre­-processor translates specific instructions of the Arduino language to native C instructions. For example, digitalWrite(0,HIGH) is translated to PORTBbits.RBO=1. Thus the execution speed is better.

The Arduino is specifically designed for hobbyist and incorporates features that make programming easy for beginners. The Arduino is supported by a very large existing experimental and functional code base. It makes sense to take the superior PIC hardware and make it as compatible as reasonably possible to the existing Arduino code base.