4 ms·

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bo

by tyingq 3y ago

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bought from some other vendor.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Well, way back then, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of hobbyists and average people get into embedded systems without much friction or EE background, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Many eons ago before the Arduino came out, I used to have EE labs in university based on the same Atmega chip but using a commercial IDE-compiler, and boy was that a giant PITA as a young buck, having to read dozens of datasheet pages, calculate by hand all the register values just to get a bloody 1 ms PWM timer output on a pin, which never worked the first time and needed an oscilloscope to debug. "Oh, you did everything right, but forgot to flip the bit of the correct pin of the output port in the right registry, have fun debugging it for the next 3 hours while you pull your hair out." And we used "modern" C, not AVR assembly (which is still nice and quite simple to understand once you get the hang of it, don't get me wrong). Sure, as an EE, that was a mandatory right of passage to prep you for a job in the industry, but not something average people would want to do as a hobby. The fact that you can do that with 2 simple lines of code, from an API, from a well documented library, that's well tested and guaranteed to work, without an expensive commercial toolchain and HW debugger, was the game changer for the hobbyist market. But this move feels a bit late in the game for them. They should have done this nearly 10 years ago, but now it feels like they squandered their early lead and became sort of irelevant amongst the sea of RPi, ESP32, STM32 with their own easy to use toolchains and libraries.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chpatrick 3y ago
  How are they going to make money from it though?
- bananapub 3y ago
  obviously the Arduino IDE is great, but they sell it for $0 so that doesn't seem very directly relevant to how they 10x this big pile of money for their investors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rollcat 3y ago
  > Well, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of people get into embedded systems, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Interesting. Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. OTOH I find the "branded" hardware attractive: it's a known quality in an ecosystem that I sometimes find complex and confusing, and I greatly appreciate the work they've put into making the whole process more approachable. Of course I have a couple clone boards at hand, but I will buy branded Arduino by default precisely because I instinctively associate the brand with less hassle.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. < Insert famous HN comment, on why Dropbox is a useless business idea, berceuse you can easily achieve that for free with a self hosted FTP server[1] > If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market, but there are millions of people out there who want to turn a relay ON when some sensor gets too hot for some garage project, without first learning about Makefiles or registers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      > If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market I am arduino targey market and I know makefiles, I hate them with a passion. One must know his enemies better than he knows himself
      - rollcat 3y ago
        In defense of the Makefiles, it's a known quality. They are indeed arcane and somewhat fragmented (BSD/GNU use different conventions; plan9 mk is a far cleaner solution), but you only need to learn them once, and things you've learned about make in the 80s is mostly still relevant in 2023. It's a dragon you only need to defeat once.
- snarfy 3y ago
  And it's not even their IDE. They just slapped some AVR compilers into Processing https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    Don't mind me just going to spam the thread with Arduino's origin as an uncredited fork of Wiring http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/
  - daaaaaaan 3y ago
    and even though it has the capability, they keep refusing to allow a vim mode option.
bityard 3y ago
Many makers I know of are using PlatformIO these days: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platformio.platformio-ide https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platform...
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  Which uses Arduino under the hood.
  - ska 3y ago
    One option is to use an arduino framework, but it's not the only one.
- dave78 3y ago
  There was recently a flareup on HN about PlatformIO trying to make money by charging a fee to vendors to be supported (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090536). Maybe Arduino wants in on that. I honestly don't see how such strategies work long-term though. As a former embedded SW engineer, the Arduino IDE seems very toy-like - which is excellent for people just starting out, but not something a company developing an embedded product is likely to use. I think PlatformIO is similar but I have only tried that once. If these companies try to get vendors to pay them to support their boards, or try to start charging users directly, I really think that the hobby community will move on and someone will fork or create their own solution, and the whole cycle will start again.
  - Dork1234 3y ago
    What is the difference between PlatformIO and something you use to develop for an Embedded platform? To me it seems PlatformIO is just a wrapper around the same command-line tools used by other companies.
    - ska 3y ago
      It gives a consistent CLI, which can be wrapped easily by e.g. VScode. It also gives a reasonable cross platform config and library management.

by tyingq 3y ago

Makes me curious what their revenue trends look like. From the outside, it feels like many people in the space are using the Arduino IDE, but with MCUs they bought from some other vendor.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Well, way back then, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of hobbyists and average people get into embedded systems without much friction or EE background, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Many eons ago before the Arduino came out, I used to have EE labs in university based on the same Atmega chip but using a commercial IDE-compiler, and boy was that a giant PITA as a young buck, having to read dozens of datasheet pages, calculate by hand all the register values just to get a bloody 1 ms PWM timer output on a pin, which never worked the first time and needed an oscilloscope to debug. "Oh, you did everything right, but forgot to flip the bit of the correct pin of the output port in the right registry, have fun debugging it for the next 3 hours while you pull your hair out." And we used "modern" C, not AVR assembly (which is still nice and quite simple to understand once you get the hang of it, don't get me wrong). Sure, as an EE, that was a mandatory right of passage to prep you for a job in the industry, but not something average people would want to do as a hobby. The fact that you can do that with 2 simple lines of code, from an API, from a well documented library, that's well tested and guaranteed to work, without an expensive commercial toolchain and HW debugger, was the game changer for the hobbyist market. But this move feels a bit late in the game for them. They should have done this nearly 10 years ago, but now it feels like they squandered their early lead and became sort of irelevant amongst the sea of RPi, ESP32, STM32 with their own easy to use toolchains and libraries.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chpatrick 3y ago
How are they going to make money from it though?
bananapub 3y ago
obviously the Arduino IDE is great, but they sell it for $0 so that doesn't seem very directly relevant to how they 10x this big pile of money for their investors.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rollcat 3y ago
> Well, the Arduino IDE was precisely the game changer that made a lot of people get into embedded systems, and not the board based on an Atmega MCU that anyone else could make. Interesting. Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. OTOH I find the "branded" hardware attractive: it's a known quality in an ecosystem that I sometimes find complex and confusing, and I greatly appreciate the work they've put into making the whole process more approachable. Of course I have a couple clone boards at hand, but I will buy branded Arduino by default precisely because I instinctively associate the brand with less hassle.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Personally I find the $OFFICIAL_IDE repulsive, and strongly prefer just writing the code in $MY_IDE, with a Makefile on the side. < Insert famous HN comment, on why Dropbox is a useless business idea, berceuse you can easily achieve that for free with a self hosted FTP server[1] > If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market, but there are millions of people out there who want to turn a relay ON when some sensor gets too hot for some garage project, without first learning about Makefiles or registers. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > If you know what a Makefile is, then you're not Arduino's target market I am arduino targey market and I know makefiles, I hate them with a passion. One must know his enemies better than he knows himself
    - rollcat 3y ago
      In defense of the Makefiles, it's a known quality. They are indeed arcane and somewhat fragmented (BSD/GNU use different conventions; plan9 mk is a far cleaner solution), but you only need to learn them once, and things you've learned about make in the 80s is mostly still relevant in 2023. It's a dragon you only need to defeat once.
snarfy 3y ago
And it's not even their IDE. They just slapped some AVR compilers into Processing https://processing.org/ https://processing.org/
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  Don't mind me just going to spam the thread with Arduino's origin as an uncredited fork of Wiring http://arduinohistory.github.io/ http://arduinohistory.github.io/
- daaaaaaan 3y ago
  and even though it has the capability, they keep refusing to allow a vim mode option.

bityard 3y ago

Many makers I know of are using PlatformIO these days: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platformio.platformio-ide https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platform...

uxp8u61q 3y ago
Which uses Arduino under the hood.
- ska 3y ago
  One option is to use an arduino framework, but it's not the only one.
dave78 3y ago
There was recently a flareup on HN about PlatformIO trying to make money by charging a fee to vendors to be supported (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090536). Maybe Arduino wants in on that. I honestly don't see how such strategies work long-term though. As a former embedded SW engineer, the Arduino IDE seems very toy-like - which is excellent for people just starting out, but not something a company developing an embedded product is likely to use. I think PlatformIO is similar but I have only tried that once. If these companies try to get vendors to pay them to support their boards, or try to start charging users directly, I really think that the hobby community will move on and someone will fork or create their own solution, and the whole cycle will start again.
- Dork1234 3y ago
  What is the difference between PlatformIO and something you use to develop for an Embedded platform? To me it seems PlatformIO is just a wrapper around the same command-line tools used by other companies.
  - ska 3y ago
    It gives a consistent CLI, which can be wrapped easily by e.g. VScode. It also gives a reasonable cross platform config and library management.