45 ms·

Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more

382 points by whiskers 10y ago

herbst 10y ago
Cool. Now i can buy the cheap offbrand clones from Aliexpress without thinking i should have supported the actual creators.
- VMG 10y ago
  Any recommendations?
  - herbst 10y ago
    I bought like 2 of them so far and they both were exactly as expected. The only thing to note is that you should try to find those with CPUs (are those CPUs?) similar to the ones from the original designs. Some (the super cheap ones, < $1) often are identical by design but come with some crappy CPU
    - andrewstuart2 10y ago
      I think they're technically microcontrollers, which are actually a microprocessor and then some (RAM, ROM, ADC, etc) all on the same chip.
      - herbst 10y ago
        yes, thats the word i was looking for i think :)
    - Retr0spectrum 10y ago
      Almost all the ones I've seen have used the atmega328P. You might see some slightly different models with different amounts of ROM and RAM, but most people would probably never notice the difference. If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead. What does change is the Serial > USB converters that they use. The more expensive ones (>£3) tend to use FTDI chips, whereas the cheap ones use a CH340G or a similar part. On some platforms you may have to install drivers to make these cheaper converters work, but they were just plug-and-play for me on Linux.
      - duskwuff 10y ago
        > If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead. Which might not be a bad idea anyways. The Arduino framework's been ported to STM32 (stm32duino.com), and you can get a board and programmer for under $10.
  - mr337 10y ago
    Any of them, I've been using everything from teensy,nano, and rebranded Uno. So far they have all worked like a charm and at a steep price reduction. Example, 5 nanos for $15 from Amazon [1]. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduino-TE359/dp/B015MGHH6Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1470925988&sr=1-4&keywords=arduino+nano https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduin...
    - manyxcxi 10y ago
      Yeah, I've not really had a problem with off-label Arduino chips/boards whenever I've ordered them either, except for one being DOA and another having an I/O pin that just wasn't connected somewhere along the way inside the microcontroller.
  - minsight 10y ago
    Robotdyn is a great vendor. Their stuff is well built (and designed), not as cheap as the other aliexpress stuff, but far cheaper than the name brand.
  - pingec 10y ago
    FastTech have some called "Arduino Compatible" they are indistinguishable from the original ones except for the text on them. I suspect they come from the same factory.
    - verytrivial 10y ago
      From the product page: Q3. Are these actually original Arduino's, then? A3. We can only officially answer we don't know. Cheeky ...
  - soapdog 10y ago
    My recommendation is a bit different, instead of that, try looking for a local manufacturer and support them. Here in Brazil, people go for the cheap aliexpress clones to the point where some of our own manufacturers are closing shop. In these cases, strengthening the local ecosystem might be interesting and wiser in the long run.
    - elcct 10y ago
      Why? Your manufacturers could focus on something more profitable. What's the point in making another Arduino like board? Supporting non innovative shops is not good in short and long run.
      - soapdog 10y ago
        It is like China and the shanzai spirit, first you clone then and make it sustainable then you innovate... (this is my personal opinion, I may be wrong). I believe that supporting local non innovative shops is better than having no local shops at all.
        elcct 10y ago
        But this is a result of that country politics. You should rather press government to make it possible to compete with Chinese (by for example lowering taxes, lessening the amount of bureaucracy - I heard this is a nightmare in Brazil). Throwing money at economy that is full of flaws will just delay the agony and not solve anything.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Hum... I've never seen a Brazilian Arduino clone. Didn't even expect it to exist. Where can I get one?
      - soapdog 10y ago
        There are many clones. Check out "mateduino"[2] which is made in the south of Brazil and also the one from robocore which is made in the southeast. There are others. The ones from robocore are great[1]. [1]: https://www.robocore.net/modules.php?name=GR_LojaVirtual&prod=530 https://www.robocore.net/modules.php?name=GR_LojaVirtual&pro... [2]: https://matehackers.org/mateduino https://matehackers.org/mateduino
- zxcvvcxz 10y ago
  Yep. I have no qualms paying $3.50 for a near-identical product that normally costs $27+tax. I'll take 10 please! Open source projects push our development capabilities forward, and price competition is just another way it does this.
antoniuschan99 10y ago
So basically the Arduino the Software Company (IDE), and Arduino the hardware supplier broke ties? I use the ESP8266 which I do believe is an Arduino (Hardware) Killer. However, the Arduino IDE has amazing support for the ESP8266 among other hardware components. This isn't a bad thing, at least for consumers, since I feel like Arduino (the hardware) is a few cycles behind (eg. Particle, CHIP, bbc micro, pi zero, nodemcu/esp8266... etc)
- Vexs 10y ago
  I dunno about the ESP8266 being a Arduino killer- it doesn't handle analog very well last I checked. But as for details over what happened, check this [1]hackaday article. [1]http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/ http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/
  - dekhn 10y ago
    It has one analog pin, it seems to be very limited, I agree. But you can get an ADC breakout and talk to it via SPI.
  - nameless912 10y ago
    But I can buy an ADC that communicates over SPI for like 3 bucks. Then I have two chips, but then also I have a total of like 10 dollars worth of electronics, which is far more capable than a 25 dollar arduino.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Yeah, I pretty much threw all my Arduino gear in the trash after I bought an ESP8266. I kept some Micros just for the analog pins, but I haven't had any use for them since.
dingo_bat 10y ago
Bah! Arduino is way overpriced for the specs anyway. Raspberry pi and others are where it's at now. But I do think there is a massive power usage difference.
- lightbyte 10y ago
  You're comparing a microcontroller (Arudino) with a computer (pi). They aren't the same thing.
  - azdle 10y ago
    Sure they are. I mean, sure, you and I know the difference between an 8-bit micro with some friendly libraries and a 64-bit ARM SOC running a full OS. But for a lot of stuff they accomplish the exact same thing. So why not compare them by what most people do with them rather than their raw technical specs.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      No, they are not. One has more in common with a FPGA, the other is literally a Linux computer. Different complexity, different skillset, different use case. ..Unless you're talking about something like the Arduino Yun, which actually runs a Linux OS. But as an example, you're probably not going to build a wifi security camera on the original device.
      - azdle 10y ago
        Yeah, but you're still talking about the raw technical implementation of how they work. All I'm trying to say is that for the vast majority of users a raspberry pi can do anything that an arduino can. Sure you might not be able to so some super tight real-time stuff that you could do with hand-rolled asm that you could do on an arduino, but at that point you're more at the level of 'using an AVR' than 'using Arduino'. When the problem is "I want to control some RGB LEDs" or something, either can be used. That means that they are of the same category.
rocky1138 10y ago
This is what happens when a company crosses the line from being a small, hacky, indie, startup shop to a corporation. It's a line that can only be seen after you cross it, making it especially onerous.
_pmf_ 10y ago
> It's a real shame that Arduino LLC seem to have lost any of the Maker-vibe it had What "vibe" would that be? Supply shortage with undependable lead time? Having to piece together documentation from malware infected wikis that may or may not still exist 10 days from now?
- tomswartz07 10y ago
  Besides the obvious trolling occurring here, I'll answer your question on behalf of OP. Arduino was (at one time) considered the holy grail of Makers. They had open source schematics[1] and were very easy to use while quickly prototyping something. For Makers, once the prototype phase had finished and it was time to move to 'production', the ATMega and ATTiny chips were very easy to buy in bulk and use directly in the product, with the guarantee that the code written on the Arduino would (for all intents and purposes) work on the embedded chip. Long story short, before they shot themselves in the foot by infighting, they had a respectable standing among tinkerers and makers. [1] https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-schematic.pdf https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-sche...
emptybits 10y ago
So... asking on behalf of a friend ;-)... my local dealer stocks both Arduino and Genuino brand boards. Is this unusual or about to change? I feel like a curtain of innocence has been torn away for me. Ignorance of the politics in the Arduino scene was bliss.
rootbear 10y ago
The local Microcenter sells Arduino Uno R3 clones under their Inland store brand for $10, currently and frequently on sale for $6. Ideally, I'd like to support Arduino LLC, but given how absurd this whole feud has been, I don't feel especially guilty when I buy a clone. I have bought a few Arduino brand 101 boards from Microcenter as well so I'm not a total sell out!
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  The Mega R3s are often down at $10 as well. Inland brand hardware has always been pretty well-built too. I've never had issues in over a decade of purchases of their store brand stuff.
nathancahill 10y ago
Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?
- mr337 10y ago
  From what I have seen a lot of ppl who wouldn't want to sit down and grok a datasheet [1]. The friction of getting started with one of these is soooo small, assuming the serial driver installs on Windows. Out of the box support on other systems. [1] - http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontroller-ATmega328-328P_datasheet.pdf http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontr...
- StavrosK 10y ago
  The compelling thing about them is that they're a gateway into hardware design. It's like asking "what serious apps have people made with Scratch?", it's rather missing the point. You start making a rotary mobile phone with Arduino and move on to make your own autonomous drone.
- jonlucc 10y ago
  It's not the next big thing, so much as the next big educational thing, in my opinion. It is a simple enough system to put electronic power in the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise have it. They learn some basics of coding, some basics of electricity, and get something tangible out of it.
- laurent123456 10y ago
  I don't think it's really a "big thing", it's mostly for hobbyist projects (since you need to know quite a bit about software development, Linux, etc.), and for that purpose it's quite good. It's cheap and you can easily connect leds, motors, etc. and control them via Python scripts. It's also frequently used to create home entertainment units for music, films or video games (emulators in particular), since there's an HDMI port that you can connect to your TV.
xchip 10y ago
Why do you want an Arduino when the ESP8266 is half the price and has WIFI?
- Kadin 10y ago
  More analog pins, is the only compelling reason I can come up with. In general I think the ESP is a better choice for most "turn the LEDs on and off" type of project though.
- nfriedly 10y ago
  Up until recently, at least, ESP8266 boards were far more finicky. Even today, for a simple task that didn't need wifi, I'd probably trust an Arduino a little more than an ESP'. It may also be partially a software thing - there are a lot of libraries that were written for Arduinos and then adapted to mostly work on ESP's. This too has been improving recently. And, as others have mentioned, Arduinos have better built-in analog support.
- michaelt 10y ago
  For applications that need Wifi, the ESP8266 is indeed a good and very competitively priced product. However, all the wifi magic on the chip is closed source, and the datasheets / documentation are much less complete than chips like the ATmega328 (which the Arduino Uno is based on). The ATmega328 has a 660-page datasheet, whereas the ESP8266 has a 30-page datasheet.
  - Radiant 10y ago
    People who can read data sheets tend not to use Arduino.
    - catdog 10y ago
      Maybe, but this (often buggy) closed source stuff and not having a proper data sheet causes a lot of trouble for projects creating these nice firmwares (micropython, nodemcu, …) which people tend to use.
    - 10y ago
jklinger410 10y ago
TLDR: Reseller is pissed that "Genuino" has to be sold as "Arduino" in the US and that they have separate SKUs. Also Genuino seems to have poor B2B/reseller support. Is this post really that petty or am I missing something?
- falcolas 10y ago
  I think you're missing the additional costs and logistics of separating out SKUs by country which are placed upon the reseller, simply for "branding" reasons.
  - dan1234 10y ago
    It sounds like they were already buying both product variants and surely it shouldn’t be too hard to restrict certain SKUs to certain territories via a shipping rule in their ecommerce system? Shame they didn’t breakdown how many sales they get from the US (wouldn’t expect it to be many considering they’re UK based). Got them to the front page in any case…
    - syntheticnature 10y ago
      It sounded like they didn't want to buy the "Arduino" variant to me because it was a separate SKU; they'd been selling "Arduino" in the past before the whole kerfluffle started.
    - alex_hitchins 10y ago
      Perhaps part of it is down to the fact they said the margins were slim already. It seems like even if it was trivial to facilitate separation or SKUs geographically it's just not worth having to work with a supplier with such restrictions.
- ploxiln 10y ago
  Engineers don't like needless restrictions. Can't sell "Arduino" in the EU because of underhanded legal reasons? Ok, fine, that's life. Can't sell "Genuino" in the US? I thought this painful brand switch was to fix stupid legal problems?! But Genuino did this to itself?!! screw it
Marazan 10y ago
My conclusion in all of this is to buy Teensy instead. Lovely thing.
- funkaster 10y ago
  Agree 100%. Paul provides incredible support and he's a real engineer. Teensy family are amazing little machines, and I've used them for many small side projects. The latest one was a custom fight stick. Paul even provides support you if you want to make your own version of teensy, once you're out of the prototype phase. Link: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/
  - paulofisch 10y ago
    Dealing with PJRC, by contrast, has been basically frictionless :-) Lovely fella too when I bumped into him at BAMF.
falcolas 10y ago
Dear Pimoroni, Please add a link to your store from your blog. Sincerely, everyone who might actually want to buy from you.
- mafro 10y ago
  https://shop.pimoroni.com/ https://shop.pimoroni.com/ EDIT: took 10 seconds to find including this edit, but your point does stand :)
  - falcolas 10y ago
    Oh, yeah, it took only a few moments to go up to the address bar and pop off "blog.", but it throws up a barrier to conversion. Doesn't matter much to me, honestly, but I had to be more than casually interested in looking at their offerings to make the effort.
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  Almost universally, these company blogs are on a subdomain and have no obvious link back to the actual site. I don't get it.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Pssshh. Dont tell them, we can use the SEO benefit for ourself if nobody knows.
nfriedly 10y ago
As far as cheap Arduino clones go, I've been pretty happy with the EDArduino ones from Electrodragon: http://www.electrodragon.com/product-category/arduino-2/arduino-main/ http://www.electrodragon.com/product-category/arduino-2/ardu...
SEJeff 10y ago
I really don't see the point of the arduinos when you can buy an esp8266 that is arduino compatible (you can use the arduino IDE and sketches). You can get the bare esp8266 chips for $1-$2 from aliexpress, or buy a tricked out one from adafruit (the huzzah) for $9. They have a full wifi stack, support micropython, etc. I think we're in a post-arduino age for microcontrollers. There are simply better options out there, of which the esp8266 is just one of the current better choices.
- jpindar 10y ago
  It's a brand name people recognize. And some of them don't realize they have options. I've heard stories of people who had built several Arduino projects, but when someone mentioned microcontrollers and working with embedded systems, responded with "what's a microcontroller?"
- archimedespi 10y ago
  The reason someone serious about embedded development would want to buy Arduino boards is that they're convenient Atmel-architecture microcontroller boards. The ESP8266 may be "arduino compatible", but a large number of those Arduino libraries running on it had to be rewritten. If you want convenience and ISA/peripheral-register compatibility with existing low-level Arduino code, you're locked in to atmegas unless you want to do some fun porting work ;)
  - Animats 10y ago
    The next step up was the Arduino Due, which is a low-end ARM system supported by the Arduino toolchain. But it seems to have been retired. (Now I find this out. I built something on a Due because I needed more memory and CPU speed.)
    - archimedespi 10y ago
      It may be retired, but Sparkfun still sells it[1]. If you're looking for other faster microcontrollers with Arduino toolchain support, there's a bunch of stuff out there. See the Wikipedia page on non-atmega Arduino-supported boards: [2]. Additionally, if you're willing to learn how to use the ARM CMSIS HAL and write raw C++, there's the STM32 series of microcontrollers. Those also support Mbed, if you want to learn that instead (it's much easier than using CMSIS with C++, it's basically the equivalent of arduino for many 32-bit ARM microcontrollers). [1]- https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11589 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11589 [2]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_compatible_systems#Non-ATmega_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_com...
dotBen 10y ago
It's really not that unusual for resellers to be given geographical territories within which they can/can't sell. Try looking up your favorite electronics on Amazon.com and see if they will ship to Europe - most times the page will say 'for US delivery only'. It is a shame that the Arduino guys split up but I would argue the situation would be even more of a mess if both new companies were able to sell into the same territories with the same name + similar product.
markhahn 10y ago
Good response, and indeed the "maker vibe" seems to have been poisoned by commercial concerns... Real makers tend to buy unbranded stuff from Chinese free-shipping places anyway. Branded Arduino is mostly a historic artifact...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Indeed, and I've heard of similar stories happening around Polish 3D printer scene few years back. Basically, it seems that when an open source project becomes popular, somebody wants to make money off it, and eventually shit like this happens.
chappi42 10y ago
If this [untold Arduino history](http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/) link is true, it seems like Massimo Banzi is not only difficult to do business with but that he had a very particular way to give credit. Better buy clones...
- alex_hitchins 10y ago
  I was going to post the same link. I have no qualms buying clones what so ever since reading this story. I've had several now and there have been no issues with quality or stability. Not even been hit with any fake FDTI chips either.
- erikb 10y ago
  I never get when people do something like that. In the long run it can only hurt them. And it costs nothing to praise another person's work that resulted in your success.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is ultimately the challenge of open source. It is always sad to hear when people go unrecognized like this, it is of course important for the Arduino folks to position history in a way that makes them look like the main guys. A lesson I learned early on, and this is a good example, is that all events have a number of facts associated with them. Adding and subtracting facts from the event can change its message in any way the narrator wants. You could say "Alice shot Bob dead, in cold blood." and it sounds like Alice is a murderer, if you add "After using a toothpick to open the handcuffs holding her to the post where Bob had abused her. Alice found a gun in the dresser and picked it up.", followed by "Alice shot Bob dead, in cold blood." More facts, different interpretation of right and wrong. If you read the Wired article on Arduino you think one thing, if you add facts from this document you think another. General advice, keep a journal and corroborating evidence.
rplnt 10y ago
> Everyone sells worldwide now. Yeah.. no. Not even close.
snarfy 10y ago
The whole thing is a sham really when you consider the heritage from the Wiring/Processing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform) Arduino is a commercial version of somebody else's academic work.
- brianobush 10y ago
  Yes, but in the end they did promote a cheap, easy to use platform something that the processing guys didn't quite achieve.
  - nameless912 10y ago
    > Cheap I wholeheartedly disagree. A TI launchpad dev board is sub-10 dollars in bulk, and an ESP8266 (which is almost incomprehensibly more powerful and has built-in WiFi) dev board is 15-ish. And both of those have nice friendly Arduino wrappers. There's really very little reason to buy vanilla Arduino anymore other than the somewhat larger community.
    - spraak 10y ago
      Do you have any links to where to get started with the boards you mention? Shops, community etc?
      - nameless912 10y ago
        TI launchpads can be bought direct from TI. I don't have a link handy. As for the ESP8266, Adafruit sells a board called the HUZZAH ESP8266. For both, the best resource in my opinion for environment set up/build system is platformio (platformio.org). It exposes an Arduino-style API for both boards, so basically the arduino docs will get you 95% of the way there, and the community sourced libraries in platformio will get you the rest of the way.
    - brianobush 10y ago
      A typical hobbyist doesn't need to buy in bulk. When I started with Arduino when it first came out, I never heard of TI launchpad series. So Arduino was first to the show. As a side: in my simple projects, not one has ever needed Wi-Fi; especially when considering power consumption.
erichocean 10y ago
Anyone know of any small, low-cost, battery powered programmable boards for Bluetooth LE? I've got the Pi 3 and CHIP is ordered, but I'd love something smaller if possible. Thanks!
- pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
  just don't get a genuino... i bought one, and they sued me for breathing too much. NOT A LIE. you're all idiots.
- syntheticnature 10y ago
  I'd suggest the Intel Edison. Take a look here, note that there's a battery block: https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272 https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272 (Of course, it can also do WiFi, but I imagine BTLE will be thriftier on power.)
- Wiles_7 10y ago
  It's not out yet but the ESP32[0] has Bluetooth. It's small and super cheap. [0] https://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview https://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview
- sandyjmacdonald 10y ago
  BBC micro:bit?
  - erichocean 10y ago
    Nice! Hadn't seen that one before...
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE has an Atmega32u4 (same as Arduino), LiPoly charger and BTLE built in for $30. I'm cheap, so soon I'm going to have a go at reflashing a $3 HC06 module with the RN-42 firmware [1], and using that with a $3 Arduino Pro Micro and a $1 TP4056 Charger board for the same capabilities but messier. I always learn more by messing around though. [1] https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad
st3v3r 10y ago
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Other stores, like Sparkfun, are quite able to do this.
- detaro 10y ago
  You don't buy what? They didn't claim that it's impossible to deal with it, just that they won't. And looking at Sparkfun's site, I see how stupid this is. For one model, both are available: 2 SKUs for technically the same board, one is out of stock. And a notice that buying either might be delayed for a few days due to address verification. Very consumer-friendly. All others they sell as Ardunios only, and they either make them themselves (and license the US trademark) or buy from the european company, so they mostly sidestep the issue.
qz_ 10y ago
I have a Teensy board, which is much cheaper and works pretty much exactly the same as Arduino and Genuino. The Teensy LC is great for small projects and is about 15 bucks IIRC. Never understood why you would stick to a more expensive brand just because of the name.
crumpled 10y ago
This article acknowledges over and over that Arduino/Genuino is following common business practices. They are complaining that arduino has become too big, and it's not nice for them, because pomoroni is also big. Kind of ironic, really. Yes, they want to cultivate a new brand while defending the old brand. It's awkward and I'm sure they aren't happy about it either.
triplesec 10y ago
It appears that greed and control issues were present right from the beginning of the Arduino project, given the experiences of Wiring's developer, Hernando Barragan, upon whose work it seems most of Arduino was branded, without recognition or recompense. I therefore would have very little sympathy for Arduino LLC. http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/ and HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021

382 points by whiskers 10y ago

Cool. Now i can buy the cheap offbrand clones from Aliexpress without thinking i should have supported the actual creators.

VMG 10y ago
Any recommendations?
- herbst 10y ago
  I bought like 2 of them so far and they both were exactly as expected. The only thing to note is that you should try to find those with CPUs (are those CPUs?) similar to the ones from the original designs. Some (the super cheap ones, < $1) often are identical by design but come with some crappy CPU
  - andrewstuart2 10y ago
    I think they're technically microcontrollers, which are actually a microprocessor and then some (RAM, ROM, ADC, etc) all on the same chip.
    - herbst 10y ago
      yes, thats the word i was looking for i think :)
  - Retr0spectrum 10y ago
    Almost all the ones I've seen have used the atmega328P. You might see some slightly different models with different amounts of ROM and RAM, but most people would probably never notice the difference. If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead. What does change is the Serial > USB converters that they use. The more expensive ones (>£3) tend to use FTDI chips, whereas the cheap ones use a CH340G or a similar part. On some platforms you may have to install drivers to make these cheaper converters work, but they were just plug-and-play for me on Linux.
    - duskwuff 10y ago
      > If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead. Which might not be a bad idea anyways. The Arduino framework's been ported to STM32 (stm32duino.com), and you can get a board and programmer for under $10.
- mr337 10y ago
  Any of them, I've been using everything from teensy,nano, and rebranded Uno. So far they have all worked like a charm and at a steep price reduction. Example, 5 nanos for $15 from Amazon [1]. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduino-TE359/dp/B015MGHH6Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1470925988&sr=1-4&keywords=arduino+nano https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduin...
  - manyxcxi 10y ago
    Yeah, I've not really had a problem with off-label Arduino chips/boards whenever I've ordered them either, except for one being DOA and another having an I/O pin that just wasn't connected somewhere along the way inside the microcontroller.
- minsight 10y ago
  Robotdyn is a great vendor. Their stuff is well built (and designed), not as cheap as the other aliexpress stuff, but far cheaper than the name brand.
- pingec 10y ago
  FastTech have some called "Arduino Compatible" they are indistinguishable from the original ones except for the text on them. I suspect they come from the same factory.
  - verytrivial 10y ago
    From the product page: Q3. Are these actually original Arduino's, then? A3. We can only officially answer we don't know. Cheeky ...
- soapdog 10y ago
  My recommendation is a bit different, instead of that, try looking for a local manufacturer and support them. Here in Brazil, people go for the cheap aliexpress clones to the point where some of our own manufacturers are closing shop. In these cases, strengthening the local ecosystem might be interesting and wiser in the long run.
  - elcct 10y ago
    Why? Your manufacturers could focus on something more profitable. What's the point in making another Arduino like board? Supporting non innovative shops is not good in short and long run.
    - soapdog 10y ago
      It is like China and the shanzai spirit, first you clone then and make it sustainable then you innovate... (this is my personal opinion, I may be wrong). I believe that supporting local non innovative shops is better than having no local shops at all.
      - elcct 10y ago
        But this is a result of that country politics. You should rather press government to make it possible to compete with Chinese (by for example lowering taxes, lessening the amount of bureaucracy - I heard this is a nightmare in Brazil). Throwing money at economy that is full of flaws will just delay the agony and not solve anything.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Hum... I've never seen a Brazilian Arduino clone. Didn't even expect it to exist. Where can I get one?
    - soapdog 10y ago
      There are many clones. Check out "mateduino"[2] which is made in the south of Brazil and also the one from robocore which is made in the southeast. There are others. The ones from robocore are great[1]. [1]: https://www.robocore.net/modules.php?name=GR_LojaVirtual&prod=530 https://www.robocore.net/modules.php?name=GR_LojaVirtual&pro... [2]: https://matehackers.org/mateduino https://matehackers.org/mateduino
zxcvvcxz 10y ago
Yep. I have no qualms paying $3.50 for a near-identical product that normally costs $27+tax. I'll take 10 please! Open source projects push our development capabilities forward, and price competition is just another way it does this.

antoniuschan99 10y ago

So basically the Arduino the Software Company (IDE), and Arduino the hardware supplier broke ties? I use the ESP8266 which I do believe is an Arduino (Hardware) Killer. However, the Arduino IDE has amazing support for the ESP8266 among other hardware components. This isn't a bad thing, at least for consumers, since I feel like Arduino (the hardware) is a few cycles behind (eg. Particle, CHIP, bbc micro, pi zero, nodemcu/esp8266... etc)

Vexs 10y ago
I dunno about the ESP8266 being a Arduino killer- it doesn't handle analog very well last I checked. But as for details over what happened, check this [1]hackaday article. [1]http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/ http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/
- dekhn 10y ago
  It has one analog pin, it seems to be very limited, I agree. But you can get an ADC breakout and talk to it via SPI.
- nameless912 10y ago
  But I can buy an ADC that communicates over SPI for like 3 bucks. Then I have two chips, but then also I have a total of like 10 dollars worth of electronics, which is far more capable than a 25 dollar arduino.
StavrosK 10y ago
Yeah, I pretty much threw all my Arduino gear in the trash after I bought an ESP8266. I kept some Micros just for the analog pins, but I haven't had any use for them since.

dingo_bat 10y ago

Bah! Arduino is way overpriced for the specs anyway. Raspberry pi and others are where it's at now. But I do think there is a massive power usage difference.

lightbyte 10y ago
You're comparing a microcontroller (Arudino) with a computer (pi). They aren't the same thing.
- azdle 10y ago
  Sure they are. I mean, sure, you and I know the difference between an 8-bit micro with some friendly libraries and a 64-bit ARM SOC running a full OS. But for a lot of stuff they accomplish the exact same thing. So why not compare them by what most people do with them rather than their raw technical specs.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    No, they are not. One has more in common with a FPGA, the other is literally a Linux computer. Different complexity, different skillset, different use case. ..Unless you're talking about something like the Arduino Yun, which actually runs a Linux OS. But as an example, you're probably not going to build a wifi security camera on the original device.
    - azdle 10y ago
      Yeah, but you're still talking about the raw technical implementation of how they work. All I'm trying to say is that for the vast majority of users a raspberry pi can do anything that an arduino can. Sure you might not be able to so some super tight real-time stuff that you could do with hand-rolled asm that you could do on an arduino, but at that point you're more at the level of 'using an AVR' than 'using Arduino'. When the problem is "I want to control some RGB LEDs" or something, either can be used. That means that they are of the same category.

rocky1138 10y ago

This is what happens when a company crosses the line from being a small, hacky, indie, startup shop to a corporation. It's a line that can only be seen after you cross it, making it especially onerous.

_pmf_ 10y ago

> It's a real shame that Arduino LLC seem to have lost any of the Maker-vibe it had What "vibe" would that be? Supply shortage with undependable lead time? Having to piece together documentation from malware infected wikis that may or may not still exist 10 days from now?

tomswartz07 10y ago
Besides the obvious trolling occurring here, I'll answer your question on behalf of OP. Arduino was (at one time) considered the holy grail of Makers. They had open source schematics[1] and were very easy to use while quickly prototyping something. For Makers, once the prototype phase had finished and it was time to move to 'production', the ATMega and ATTiny chips were very easy to buy in bulk and use directly in the product, with the guarantee that the code written on the Arduino would (for all intents and purposes) work on the embedded chip. Long story short, before they shot themselves in the foot by infighting, they had a respectable standing among tinkerers and makers. [1] https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-schematic.pdf https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-sche...

emptybits 10y ago

So... asking on behalf of a friend ;-)... my local dealer stocks both Arduino and Genuino brand boards. Is this unusual or about to change? I feel like a curtain of innocence has been torn away for me. Ignorance of the politics in the Arduino scene was bliss.

rootbear 10y ago

The local Microcenter sells Arduino Uno R3 clones under their Inland store brand for $10, currently and frequently on sale for $6. Ideally, I'd like to support Arduino LLC, but given how absurd this whole feud has been, I don't feel especially guilty when I buy a clone. I have bought a few Arduino brand 101 boards from Microcenter as well so I'm not a total sell out!

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
The Mega R3s are often down at $10 as well. Inland brand hardware has always been pretty well-built too. I've never had issues in over a decade of purchases of their store brand stuff.

nathancahill 10y ago

Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

mr337 10y ago
From what I have seen a lot of ppl who wouldn't want to sit down and grok a datasheet [1]. The friction of getting started with one of these is soooo small, assuming the serial driver installs on Windows. Out of the box support on other systems. [1] - http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontroller-ATmega328-328P_datasheet.pdf http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-42735-8-bit-AVR-Microcontr...
StavrosK 10y ago
The compelling thing about them is that they're a gateway into hardware design. It's like asking "what serious apps have people made with Scratch?", it's rather missing the point. You start making a rotary mobile phone with Arduino and move on to make your own autonomous drone.
jonlucc 10y ago
It's not the next big thing, so much as the next big educational thing, in my opinion. It is a simple enough system to put electronic power in the hands of people who wouldn't otherwise have it. They learn some basics of coding, some basics of electricity, and get something tangible out of it.
laurent123456 10y ago
I don't think it's really a "big thing", it's mostly for hobbyist projects (since you need to know quite a bit about software development, Linux, etc.), and for that purpose it's quite good. It's cheap and you can easily connect leds, motors, etc. and control them via Python scripts. It's also frequently used to create home entertainment units for music, films or video games (emulators in particular), since there's an HDMI port that you can connect to your TV.

xchip 10y ago

Why do you want an Arduino when the ESP8266 is half the price and has WIFI?

Kadin 10y ago
More analog pins, is the only compelling reason I can come up with. In general I think the ESP is a better choice for most "turn the LEDs on and off" type of project though.
nfriedly 10y ago
Up until recently, at least, ESP8266 boards were far more finicky. Even today, for a simple task that didn't need wifi, I'd probably trust an Arduino a little more than an ESP'. It may also be partially a software thing - there are a lot of libraries that were written for Arduinos and then adapted to mostly work on ESP's. This too has been improving recently. And, as others have mentioned, Arduinos have better built-in analog support.
michaelt 10y ago
For applications that need Wifi, the ESP8266 is indeed a good and very competitively priced product. However, all the wifi magic on the chip is closed source, and the datasheets / documentation are much less complete than chips like the ATmega328 (which the Arduino Uno is based on). The ATmega328 has a 660-page datasheet, whereas the ESP8266 has a 30-page datasheet.
- Radiant 10y ago
  People who can read data sheets tend not to use Arduino.
  - catdog 10y ago
    Maybe, but this (often buggy) closed source stuff and not having a proper data sheet causes a lot of trouble for projects creating these nice firmwares (micropython, nodemcu, …) which people tend to use.
  - 10y ago

jklinger410 10y ago

TLDR: Reseller is pissed that "Genuino" has to be sold as "Arduino" in the US and that they have separate SKUs. Also Genuino seems to have poor B2B/reseller support. Is this post really that petty or am I missing something?

falcolas 10y ago
I think you're missing the additional costs and logistics of separating out SKUs by country which are placed upon the reseller, simply for "branding" reasons.
- dan1234 10y ago
  It sounds like they were already buying both product variants and surely it shouldn’t be too hard to restrict certain SKUs to certain territories via a shipping rule in their ecommerce system? Shame they didn’t breakdown how many sales they get from the US (wouldn’t expect it to be many considering they’re UK based). Got them to the front page in any case…
  - syntheticnature 10y ago
    It sounded like they didn't want to buy the "Arduino" variant to me because it was a separate SKU; they'd been selling "Arduino" in the past before the whole kerfluffle started.
  - alex_hitchins 10y ago
    Perhaps part of it is down to the fact they said the margins were slim already. It seems like even if it was trivial to facilitate separation or SKUs geographically it's just not worth having to work with a supplier with such restrictions.
ploxiln 10y ago
Engineers don't like needless restrictions. Can't sell "Arduino" in the EU because of underhanded legal reasons? Ok, fine, that's life. Can't sell "Genuino" in the US? I thought this painful brand switch was to fix stupid legal problems?! But Genuino did this to itself?!! screw it

Marazan 10y ago

My conclusion in all of this is to buy Teensy instead. Lovely thing.

funkaster 10y ago
Agree 100%. Paul provides incredible support and he's a real engineer. Teensy family are amazing little machines, and I've used them for many small side projects. The latest one was a custom fight stick. Paul even provides support you if you want to make your own version of teensy, once you're out of the prototype phase. Link: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/
- paulofisch 10y ago
  Dealing with PJRC, by contrast, has been basically frictionless :-) Lovely fella too when I bumped into him at BAMF.

falcolas 10y ago

Dear Pimoroni, Please add a link to your store from your blog. Sincerely, everyone who might actually want to buy from you.

mafro 10y ago
https://shop.pimoroni.com/ https://shop.pimoroni.com/ EDIT: took 10 seconds to find including this edit, but your point does stand :)
- falcolas 10y ago
  Oh, yeah, it took only a few moments to go up to the address bar and pop off "blog.", but it throws up a barrier to conversion. Doesn't matter much to me, honestly, but I had to be more than casually interested in looking at their offerings to make the effort.
ghostly_s 10y ago
Almost universally, these company blogs are on a subdomain and have no obvious link back to the actual site. I don't get it.
- herbst 10y ago
  Pssshh. Dont tell them, we can use the SEO benefit for ourself if nobody knows.

nfriedly 10y ago

As far as cheap Arduino clones go, I've been pretty happy with the EDArduino ones from Electrodragon: http://www.electrodragon.com/product-category/arduino-2/arduino-main/ http://www.electrodragon.com/product-category/arduino-2/ardu...

SEJeff 10y ago

I really don't see the point of the arduinos when you can buy an esp8266 that is arduino compatible (you can use the arduino IDE and sketches). You can get the bare esp8266 chips for $1-$2 from aliexpress, or buy a tricked out one from adafruit (the huzzah) for $9. They have a full wifi stack, support micropython, etc. I think we're in a post-arduino age for microcontrollers. There are simply better options out there, of which the esp8266 is just one of the current better choices.

jpindar 10y ago
It's a brand name people recognize. And some of them don't realize they have options. I've heard stories of people who had built several Arduino projects, but when someone mentioned microcontrollers and working with embedded systems, responded with "what's a microcontroller?"
archimedespi 10y ago
The reason someone serious about embedded development would want to buy Arduino boards is that they're convenient Atmel-architecture microcontroller boards. The ESP8266 may be "arduino compatible", but a large number of those Arduino libraries running on it had to be rewritten. If you want convenience and ISA/peripheral-register compatibility with existing low-level Arduino code, you're locked in to atmegas unless you want to do some fun porting work ;)
- Animats 10y ago
  The next step up was the Arduino Due, which is a low-end ARM system supported by the Arduino toolchain. But it seems to have been retired. (Now I find this out. I built something on a Due because I needed more memory and CPU speed.)
  - archimedespi 10y ago
    It may be retired, but Sparkfun still sells it[1]. If you're looking for other faster microcontrollers with Arduino toolchain support, there's a bunch of stuff out there. See the Wikipedia page on non-atmega Arduino-supported boards: [2]. Additionally, if you're willing to learn how to use the ARM CMSIS HAL and write raw C++, there's the STM32 series of microcontrollers. Those also support Mbed, if you want to learn that instead (it's much easier than using CMSIS with C++, it's basically the equivalent of arduino for many 32-bit ARM microcontrollers). [1]- https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11589 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11589 [2]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_compatible_systems#Non-ATmega_boards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arduino_boards_and_com...

dotBen 10y ago

It's really not that unusual for resellers to be given geographical territories within which they can/can't sell. Try looking up your favorite electronics on Amazon.com and see if they will ship to Europe - most times the page will say 'for US delivery only'. It is a shame that the Arduino guys split up but I would argue the situation would be even more of a mess if both new companies were able to sell into the same territories with the same name + similar product.

markhahn 10y ago

Good response, and indeed the "maker vibe" seems to have been poisoned by commercial concerns... Real makers tend to buy unbranded stuff from Chinese free-shipping places anyway. Branded Arduino is mostly a historic artifact...

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Indeed, and I've heard of similar stories happening around Polish 3D printer scene few years back. Basically, it seems that when an open source project becomes popular, somebody wants to make money off it, and eventually shit like this happens.

chappi42 10y ago

If this [untold Arduino history](http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/) link is true, it seems like Massimo Banzi is not only difficult to do business with but that he had a very particular way to give credit. Better buy clones...

alex_hitchins 10y ago
I was going to post the same link. I have no qualms buying clones what so ever since reading this story. I've had several now and there have been no issues with quality or stability. Not even been hit with any fake FDTI chips either.
erikb 10y ago
I never get when people do something like that. In the long run it can only hurt them. And it costs nothing to praise another person's work that resulted in your success.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is ultimately the challenge of open source. It is always sad to hear when people go unrecognized like this, it is of course important for the Arduino folks to position history in a way that makes them look like the main guys. A lesson I learned early on, and this is a good example, is that all events have a number of facts associated with them. Adding and subtracting facts from the event can change its message in any way the narrator wants. You could say "Alice shot Bob dead, in cold blood." and it sounds like Alice is a murderer, if you add "After using a toothpick to open the handcuffs holding her to the post where Bob had abused her. Alice found a gun in the dresser and picked it up.", followed by "Alice shot Bob dead, in cold blood." More facts, different interpretation of right and wrong. If you read the Wired article on Arduino you think one thing, if you add facts from this document you think another. General advice, keep a journal and corroborating evidence.

rplnt 10y ago

> Everyone sells worldwide now. Yeah.. no. Not even close.

snarfy 10y ago

The whole thing is a sham really when you consider the heritage from the Wiring/Processing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform) Arduino is a commercial version of somebody else's academic work.

brianobush 10y ago
Yes, but in the end they did promote a cheap, easy to use platform something that the processing guys didn't quite achieve.
- nameless912 10y ago
  > Cheap I wholeheartedly disagree. A TI launchpad dev board is sub-10 dollars in bulk, and an ESP8266 (which is almost incomprehensibly more powerful and has built-in WiFi) dev board is 15-ish. And both of those have nice friendly Arduino wrappers. There's really very little reason to buy vanilla Arduino anymore other than the somewhat larger community.
  - spraak 10y ago
    Do you have any links to where to get started with the boards you mention? Shops, community etc?
    - nameless912 10y ago
      TI launchpads can be bought direct from TI. I don't have a link handy. As for the ESP8266, Adafruit sells a board called the HUZZAH ESP8266. For both, the best resource in my opinion for environment set up/build system is platformio (platformio.org). It exposes an Arduino-style API for both boards, so basically the arduino docs will get you 95% of the way there, and the community sourced libraries in platformio will get you the rest of the way.
  - brianobush 10y ago
    A typical hobbyist doesn't need to buy in bulk. When I started with Arduino when it first came out, I never heard of TI launchpad series. So Arduino was first to the show. As a side: in my simple projects, not one has ever needed Wi-Fi; especially when considering power consumption.

erichocean 10y ago

Anyone know of any small, low-cost, battery powered programmable boards for Bluetooth LE? I've got the Pi 3 and CHIP is ordered, but I'd love something smaller if possible. Thanks!

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
just don't get a genuino... i bought one, and they sued me for breathing too much. NOT A LIE. you're all idiots.
syntheticnature 10y ago
I'd suggest the Intel Edison. Take a look here, note that there's a battery block: https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272 https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272 (Of course, it can also do WiFi, but I imagine BTLE will be thriftier on power.)
Wiles_7 10y ago
It's not out yet but the ESP32[0] has Bluetooth. It's small and super cheap. [0] https://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview https://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp32/overview
sandyjmacdonald 10y ago
BBC micro:bit?
- erichocean 10y ago
  Nice! Hadn't seen that one before...
brokenmachine 10y ago
Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE has an Atmega32u4 (same as Arduino), LiPoly charger and BTLE built in for $30. I'm cheap, so soon I'm going to have a go at reflashing a $3 HC06 module with the RN-42 firmware [1], and using that with a $3 Arduino Pro Micro and a $1 TP4056 Charger board for the same capabilities but messier. I always learn more by messing around though. [1] https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad https://mitxela.com/projects/bluetooth_hid_gamepad

st3v3r 10y ago

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Other stores, like Sparkfun, are quite able to do this.

detaro 10y ago
You don't buy what? They didn't claim that it's impossible to deal with it, just that they won't. And looking at Sparkfun's site, I see how stupid this is. For one model, both are available: 2 SKUs for technically the same board, one is out of stock. And a notice that buying either might be delayed for a few days due to address verification. Very consumer-friendly. All others they sell as Ardunios only, and they either make them themselves (and license the US trademark) or buy from the european company, so they mostly sidestep the issue.

qz_ 10y ago

I have a Teensy board, which is much cheaper and works pretty much exactly the same as Arduino and Genuino. The Teensy LC is great for small projects and is about 15 bucks IIRC. Never understood why you would stick to a more expensive brand just because of the name.

crumpled 10y ago

This article acknowledges over and over that Arduino/Genuino is following common business practices. They are complaining that arduino has become too big, and it's not nice for them, because pomoroni is also big. Kind of ironic, really. Yes, they want to cultivate a new brand while defending the old brand. It's awkward and I'm sure they aren't happy about it either.

triplesec 10y ago

It appears that greed and control issues were present right from the beginning of the Arduino project, given the experiences of Wiring's developer, Hernando Barragan, upon whose work it seems most of Arduino was branded, without recognition or recompense. I therefore would have very little sympathy for Arduino LLC. http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/ and HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021