Arduino vs. Xedge - blocking vs. non-blocking loops

The Problem with Arduino Loops

When you're starting out, Arduino is great: simple, accessible, and well-documented. But as your projects grow, it's biggest strength becomes a major limitation.

Let's explore why and how using Lua with Xedge offers a better path for beginners who want to eventually move on to writing scalable professio

Arduino's main loop is easy to understand:

But this is a blocking loop. In other words, your entire system halts while blinking an LED.

During each delay(), the microcontroller is doing nothing else. If your project needs to handle a sensor, process network data, or respond to a button, it can't. You're stuck. There are solutions to this problem, such as the approach described in this tutorial, that show how to replace blocking delays with non-blocking timers. These methods allow your code to check whether a certain amount of time has passed, without halting the entire system. However, while working, this solution introduces a new challenge: you'll need to manually design complex state machines to manage task flow, handle timing, and track the state of each process.

Using Lua and Xedge's Non-Blocking Design

With Xedge running Lua on a microcontroller, beginners can write code that looks like a simple loop, yet is non-blocking and event-driven.

It looks like Arduino, right? But there’s a critical difference:

• coroutine.yield(true) pauses the task without blocking the processor.
• While your LED is "waiting," the CPU can handle network requests, run other coroutines, or perform parallel tasks.

Why This Matters When Writing Embedded Programs

With Xedge, beginners can:

• Write multiple non-blocking "loops" (coroutines).
• React to HW interrupts (events) using Lua callbacks.
• Scale up from simple tasks to complex IoT systems.
• Keep code readable and beginner-friendly.

The following video demonstrates how Xedge, running on a microcontroller, executes two loops simultaneously, one loop handling communication via the MQTT IoT protocol, and another controlling an LED strip.

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