5 ms·

Arduino Dispute reaches out to Distributors

49 points by szczys 12y ago

analog31 12y ago
I will admit that I find the whole issue bewildering, but my gut reaction is that I will in the long run care more about keeping the software flowing than the hardware.
- toyg 12y ago
  The problem is that these things take time (in Italy even more so), and until they're resolved, any reasonable reseller or manufacturer will stay away from Arduino, basically destroying the ecosystem. In that sense, it doesn't really matter which side "keeps flowing" because nobody will care by then.
jacquesm 12y ago
Actions like these will kill the whole arduino brand. It's akin to parents that divorce claiming a physical half of their kids each, it simply will not work. The rest of the world needs to see a unified front and to air your dirty laundry like this in an attempt to pre-empt the lawsuit is only going to turn off the recipients of this letter from the arduino brand and will cause them to look for alternatives elsewhere (of which there are quite a few by now). What a pity, the arduino brand had a ton of goodwill attached.
- dkhenry 12y ago
  I think the arduino brand will die out and I am kinda happy. Those chips are way underpowered for their price and with the rest of the embedded space really moving towards tiny arm cores and general purpose computers I think the market for the AVR's is going to dry up. Even now I can use a raspberry pi for most of the hacks I was using arduino for.
  - szczys 12y ago
    I think it's two different tools. "Underpowered" chips have their use and their place. Why deal with embedded Linux when I only need to twiddle some IO on a simple protocol? For me the issue isn't the brand dying out, its decentralized uniformity. If the main organization spins into oblivion (when talented people give up because of this turmoil) who will make sure the unified IDE keeps with the times?
    - dkersten 12y ago
      There are ARM microcontrollers (Cortex-M{1-4}) - these don't run embedded linux. See, for example, the Teensy 3.x boards.
  - Quequau 12y ago
    I've got hopes that Bunnie's Fernvale project will yield some success as alternative to Arduino http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Fernvale_Main_Page http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Fernvale_Main_Page
aceperry 12y ago
It's a shame that Arduino SRL is behaving like this. The smart move would've been to make up with the original founders instead of trying to shove them aside. "Open Source is the environment we want for millions" In my view, their actions don't seem to embody the spirit of the open source movement. I've gotten into the arduino environment recently and really enjoy it, even though I come from an embedded background. I hope this doesn't stop the arduino environment and ecosystem.
Animats 12y ago
Atmel ought to come out with an Arduino form factor board. They make the CPU, and they make lots of eval and demo boards. Just cut out the middleman.
- lukaslalinsky 12y ago
  At least for me, Arduino is not even about the hardware itself. It's about a nice, simple and standard platform. You can get many different Arduino compatible boards from different manufacturers, usable for different purposes. You can easily make your own. Having an IDE and a simple library that works on all those boards, without needing any complicated setup, is what makes Arduino what it is.
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Today's business lesson: But everyone was friends, right? Wrong! That's why you need lawyers and contracts and agreements about who owns what intellectual property. That's why you try to remove any and all ambiguity you can think of. Don't worry, that won't get remove all the "fun". There will be plenty of new ambiguities to squabble over that you haven't thought of yet.
roel_v 12y ago
So I have a small project I wanted to get into using Arduino, for which bigger full PC solutions like RPi aren't suitable (small embedded controller for home automation). The Arduino 'ecosystem' was confusing before this, now with this infighting it has become a total clusterfuck. So, what alternatives are there? I need a simple, very cheap and very lower power chip that I can program easily using a regular PC and that can interface with a few optocouplers. Would it make sense to go directly for an ATmega? Or would I need additional circuitry to make that work? If I can program in C that would be OK, I don't need the software to be 'easy to use' - the hardware I'm unfamiliar with though so that needs to be plug and play.
- icebraining 12y ago
  An arduino or arduino clone still seems like the best bet to me, in my amateur opinion. Nowadays you can get an UNO clone for $4, and that gets you pin compatibility with Arduino shields, plus loads of guides and help interfacing with other components. I still have a Freaduino Micro (besides my original Duemilanove) and it works fine. And the Arduino can be programmed in C; in fact, the "Arduino language" is just C (or C++ nowadays?) with some preprocessing and a bunch of helper libraries.
- dkersten 12y ago
  These are my personal favourites: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ I've also extensively used PIC24's and they're great (fast, cheap, feature-rich 16bit microcontrollers) but I don't know of any existing boards using them (I made my own) and there isn't nearly as much documentation/sample code/libraries as there is for Arduino and clones.
- StringyBob 12y ago
  Have you seen mbed? http://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ http://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ Not used it for a couple of years myself, but it seems to have expanded in scope a lot recently. Was very quick to get started hacking (can program over usb from the free cloud-based IDE), and some of the boards are under $15.
  - 12y ago

49 points by szczys 12y ago

I will admit that I find the whole issue bewildering, but my gut reaction is that I will in the long run care more about keeping the software flowing than the hardware.

toyg 12y ago
The problem is that these things take time (in Italy even more so), and until they're resolved, any reasonable reseller or manufacturer will stay away from Arduino, basically destroying the ecosystem. In that sense, it doesn't really matter which side "keeps flowing" because nobody will care by then.

jacquesm 12y ago

Actions like these will kill the whole arduino brand. It's akin to parents that divorce claiming a physical half of their kids each, it simply will not work. The rest of the world needs to see a unified front and to air your dirty laundry like this in an attempt to pre-empt the lawsuit is only going to turn off the recipients of this letter from the arduino brand and will cause them to look for alternatives elsewhere (of which there are quite a few by now). What a pity, the arduino brand had a ton of goodwill attached.

dkhenry 12y ago
I think the arduino brand will die out and I am kinda happy. Those chips are way underpowered for their price and with the rest of the embedded space really moving towards tiny arm cores and general purpose computers I think the market for the AVR's is going to dry up. Even now I can use a raspberry pi for most of the hacks I was using arduino for.
- szczys 12y ago
  I think it's two different tools. "Underpowered" chips have their use and their place. Why deal with embedded Linux when I only need to twiddle some IO on a simple protocol? For me the issue isn't the brand dying out, its decentralized uniformity. If the main organization spins into oblivion (when talented people give up because of this turmoil) who will make sure the unified IDE keeps with the times?
  - dkersten 12y ago
    There are ARM microcontrollers (Cortex-M{1-4}) - these don't run embedded linux. See, for example, the Teensy 3.x boards.
- Quequau 12y ago
  I've got hopes that Bunnie's Fernvale project will yield some success as alternative to Arduino http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Fernvale_Main_Page http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Fernvale_Main_Page

aceperry 12y ago

It's a shame that Arduino SRL is behaving like this. The smart move would've been to make up with the original founders instead of trying to shove them aside. "Open Source is the environment we want for millions" In my view, their actions don't seem to embody the spirit of the open source movement. I've gotten into the arduino environment recently and really enjoy it, even though I come from an embedded background. I hope this doesn't stop the arduino environment and ecosystem.

Animats 12y ago

Atmel ought to come out with an Arduino form factor board. They make the CPU, and they make lots of eval and demo boards. Just cut out the middleman.

lukaslalinsky 12y ago
At least for me, Arduino is not even about the hardware itself. It's about a nice, simple and standard platform. You can get many different Arduino compatible boards from different manufacturers, usable for different purposes. You can easily make your own. Having an IDE and a simple library that works on all those boards, without needing any complicated setup, is what makes Arduino what it is.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

Today's business lesson: But everyone was friends, right? Wrong! That's why you need lawyers and contracts and agreements about who owns what intellectual property. That's why you try to remove any and all ambiguity you can think of. Don't worry, that won't get remove all the "fun". There will be plenty of new ambiguities to squabble over that you haven't thought of yet.

roel_v 12y ago

So I have a small project I wanted to get into using Arduino, for which bigger full PC solutions like RPi aren't suitable (small embedded controller for home automation). The Arduino 'ecosystem' was confusing before this, now with this infighting it has become a total clusterfuck. So, what alternatives are there? I need a simple, very cheap and very lower power chip that I can program easily using a regular PC and that can interface with a few optocouplers. Would it make sense to go directly for an ATmega? Or would I need additional circuitry to make that work? If I can program in C that would be OK, I don't need the software to be 'easy to use' - the hardware I'm unfamiliar with though so that needs to be plug and play.

icebraining 12y ago
An arduino or arduino clone still seems like the best bet to me, in my amateur opinion. Nowadays you can get an UNO clone for $4, and that gets you pin compatibility with Arduino shields, plus loads of guides and help interfacing with other components. I still have a Freaduino Micro (besides my original Duemilanove) and it works fine. And the Arduino can be programmed in C; in fact, the "Arduino language" is just C (or C++ nowadays?) with some preprocessing and a bunch of helper libraries.
dkersten 12y ago
These are my personal favourites: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ I've also extensively used PIC24's and they're great (fast, cheap, feature-rich 16bit microcontrollers) but I don't know of any existing boards using them (I made my own) and there isn't nearly as much documentation/sample code/libraries as there is for Arduino and clones.
StringyBob 12y ago
Have you seen mbed? http://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ http://developer.mbed.org/platforms/ Not used it for a couple of years myself, but it seems to have expanded in scope a lot recently. Was very quick to get started hacking (can program over usb from the free cloud-based IDE), and some of the boards are under $15.
- 12y ago