There seems to be some storm on around the Arduino ecoystem. Arduino v. Arduino posting at Hackaday seems to indicate that there are two Arduno companies that are disagreement: Arduino LLC is suing Arduino Srl (the Italian version of an LLC).
Arduino LLC is the company founded by Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe and Gianluca Martino in 2009 and is the owner of the Arduino trademark. It gave us the Arduino board designs, software, and community support that’s gotten the Arduino where it is. This company has the original arduino.cc web site. Arduino.cc has recently poured quite a bit more work into the software lately (released version 1.6.0). Banzi and the other three have wanted to internationalize the brand and license production to other firms freely according to original Arduino’s Open Source Hardware credentials. The Arduino AtHeart program is designed for makers and companies wishing to make their products easily recognisable as based on the Arduino technology (you pay a small license fee for right to use Arduino name).
The original Arduino boards you can buy were manufactured by a spinoff company, Smart Projects Srl, founded by the same Gianluca Martino. Things got ugly in November when [Martino] and new CEO [Federico Musto] renamed Smart Projects to Arduino Srl, registered arduino.org, keep all production themselves in Italy and finally list the company on the stock market. Looks like Arduino.org forked the software a couple months ago.
So, Arduino finally got on the I-hate-the-arduino-bandwagon to start suing itself huh? Get ready for the Arduino wars. If this goes to court probably everyone loses – except the lawyers.
26 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Pullin (@AndrewPullin) says:
February 27, 2015 at 1:21 am
Arduino is so big that two companies are suing each other over the spoils, and “an arduino” is now a standard building block, and the word is now the “Kleenex” of microcontroller boards …
… and yet, they still have a horrific, shoddy, buddy build system.
There are so so many options for build systems. Make, CMake, Ant, Maven, Gradle, SCons, etc. And Arduino refuses to use any of them.
It wouldn’t even be hard to port it over. Hell, I am going to go and do it right now …
Source: Comment at http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino v Arduino: Part II
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/
The Players
In short, there are two companies calling themselves “Arduino” at the moment. One, Arduino LLC was founded by [Massimo Banzi], [David Cuartielles], [David Mellis], [Tom Igoe] and [Gianluca Martino] in 2009, runs the website arduino.cc, and has been directing and releasing the code that makes it all work. Most of these folks had been working together on what would become the Arduino project since as early as 2005.
The other “Arduino” used to be called Smart Projects and was the manufacturing arm of the project founded and run by [Gianluca Martino]. Smart Projects changed their name to Arduino SRL in November 2014.
They have been a major producer of Arduino boards from the very beginning and recently registered the domain arduino.org.
Around the time of the name change [Martino] sold his shares to a Swiss firm Gheo SA and [Federico Musto] was appointed CEO.
dog hunter and [Musto] helped develop the Arduino Yun, a mashup of an Arduino with an OpenWRT-compatible WiFi router. dog hunter also runs the Linino.org website to support the Linux distribution that’s running on the router part of the Yun.
The claims to invalidate Arduino LLC’s trademark on “Arduino” (PDF) can basically be summarized as follows: “We filed for trademark in September of 2014 and have been producing boards labelled Arduino since 2005. Arduino LLC only came into being in 2009 and wasn’t in control of the name at the time it applied for the trademark.”
To which Arduino LLC’s response (PDF) essentially reads “We’ve had the trademark on the word Arduino longer than you have, and we deny all the rest.”
it looks like the case is going to revolve around whether or not Arduino LLC actually controlled the “Arduino” name at the time it trademarked it
A Tale of Two Internets of Things
Not surprisingly, both groups have differing versions of where to go from here, but both sides are betting on the Internet of Things. Arduino LLC has partnered with Intel on the Galileo and more recently is working with BeagleBoard.org on the forthcoming Arduino TRE. Arduino SRL is sticking with the WiFi router MIPS solution that powers the Yun and keeping it in-house.
And now on arduino.org, there’s a placeholder product photo for the “Arduino Yun Mini” with the date April 30, 2015 attached. The Yun Mini looks exactly like the Linino One
The next step up from the Yun on the arduino.cc site is the Arduino TRE, which is also a Linux-based solution coupled with an ATmega32u4.
[Martino] and now [Musto] clearly have a vested interest in keeping production in Italy, while Arduino LLC’s interests are better served by going global.
So what does all of this mean for the future of Arduino as we know it? There’s certainly been a code fork and there are at least two divergent hardware design approaches to the IoT and strategic visions for the two firms. The trademark issues may not be resolved until 2016, though, so in the mean time there’s going to be significant market confusion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino SRL to Distributors: “We’re the REAL Arduino”
http://hackaday.com/2015/03/28/arduino-srl-to-distributors-were-the-real-arduino/
Arduino SRL (formerly known as Smart Projects SRL) sent out a letter to its distribution partners yesterday.
it’s essentially a tactical move to reassure their distribution channels that Arduino SRL is the “One True Arduino”.
Fast-forward to September 2014, when Arduino LLC filed a lawsuit in Italy against Smart Projects claiming that they had infringed LLC’s trademark and that they had recently stopped paying licensing fees on their use of the Arduino name. In October, Smart Projects filed with the USPTO to revoke Arduino LLC’s trademark. In late 2014, Smart Projects changed its company name to Arduino SRL (a “Società a responsabilità limitata” is one form of Italian limited-liability company)
Smart Projects was certainly the largest manufacturer of Arduino boards.
But it sidesteps the issue at hand in the trademark suits: whether they were simply a licensed producer of the boards or whether they’re “Arduino”.
Arduino LLC doesn’t manufacture boards, but exists to license their trademark out to fund development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino turned 11 yesterday, and like many children of that age, the celebrations were kind of interrupted by its divorced parents’ continuing battle for custody….
Source: Comment at http://slashdot.org/story/15/03/29/128253/arduino-dispute-reaches-out-to-distributors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino IDE Forked
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/06/arduino-ide-forked/
As if it weren’t confusing enough in the Arduino world these days, now we’re going to have to deal with conflicting version numbers for the IDE. Yup, it’s been forked. Arduino LLC is offering a recently-updated version 1.6.3 at arduino.cc, but Arduino SRL has bumped up the version number to 1.7.0 at arduino.org. The conflict in naming and versioning has not gone unnoticed.
According to this article (Google translate here) the versions don’t differ by much, and the 1.7.0 IDE may even be a step backwards versus 1.6.3.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino Vs. Arduino: The Reseller’s Conundrum
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/15/arduino-vs-arduino-the-resellers-conundrum/
Over the last few months, the internal struggles between the various founders of Arduino have come to a head.
This is a mess, but not just for two organizations fighting over a trademark. If you’re selling Arduinos in your web store, which Arduino do you side with?
Currently, Arduino SRL is the only source of Arduino Unos. Sparkfun will continue to buy Unos from SRL, but they’re not necessarily siding with Arduino SRL; people demand blue Arduinos with Italy silkscreened on the board, and Sparkfun is more than happy to supply these.
There are, however, questions about the future of Arduino hardware. The Arduino software stack will surely be around in a year, but anyone that will be purchasing thousands of little blue boards over the next year is understandably nervous.
This isn’t the first time Sparkfun has faced a challenge in Arduino supply.
In response to these supply chain problems, Sparkfun created the RedBoard.
Sparkfun has always offered to pay royalties on the RedBoard to Arduino LLC, just as they do with the Arduino Pro and Pro Mini. Effectively, Sparkfun is on the fence, with offers to manufacture the Arduino Zero, Uno, Mega, and Due coming from the LLC.
The reason for this is consumers. If someone wants an Arduino SRL-manufactured board, they’ll buy it. If, however, a customer wants to support Arduino LLC, that option is on the table as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your Arduino Packaging Could Sway a Court Case
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/19/your-arduino-packaging-could-sway-a-court-case/
Our friends over at Adafruit just made an interesting suggestion regarding the Arduino vs. Arduino saga. They noticed that the packaging for the Arduino UNO includes a pamphlet that states:
Manufactured under license
from Arduino by
SMART PROJECTS S.r.l.
Wow. That’s pretty interesting. Smart Projects is the former name of Arduino SRL.
Specifically, Arduino SRL is claiming to be the real trademark holder and has gone as far as forking the Arduino IDE
We share their curiosity of discovering how far back official Arduino hardware has included such license notices.
Saastainen Kadet says:
April 19, 2015 at 11:16 pm
on second look it actually does have that message “Manufactured under licensefrom Arduino by SMART PROJECTS S.r.l.” it just doesnt look anything like whats in the picture shown here.
Also the box says copyright 2011 Arduino LLC. It really wouldnt suprise me if this sat on the shelf for 2 years before I bought it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Massimo Banzi: Fighting for Arduino
http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/
Massimo Banzi tells us about a serious rift in the core Arduino team, which is just coming to light now. One of the founding team members has gone off on his own, claiming rights to Arduino and starting a separate operation. We asked Massimo to explain the situation in his own words. —Dale Dougherty
When the Arduino project started, the five co-founders (myself, David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe, and Gianluca Martino) decided to create a company that would own the trademarks and manage the business side of Arduino: Manufacturers would build and sell boards, Arduino would get a royalty from them like in many other businesses, such as in the fashion world. This happened in April 2008 when Arduino LLC was founded and the bylaws of the company specified that each of the five founders would transfer to this company any ownership of the Arduino brand. At the end of 2008 when Arduino was about to register the trademark in the US and worldwide, unknown to us and without any advance notice, Gianluca’s company Smart Projects — our main boards manufacturer — went ahead and registered the Arduino name in Italy and kept this news for himself for almost two years.
After the process of registering in the US was over and our lawyer tried to extend the trademark to the rest of the world, he realised that somebody had registered it already in Italy.
A year ago without explanation, Gianluca’s manufacturing company stopped cooperating with us and unilaterally stopped paying royalties. So if people bought an Arduino board made in Italy in the last year thinking they were supporting the project they should know that we didn’t receive any money for it despite the fact that we designed, documented, maintained and supported those products. (The other manufacturers are still by our side.)
Last November, SmartProjects appointed a new CEO, Mr. Musto, who renamed the company to Arduino Srl and created a website called “Arduino” copying our graphics and layout, claiming to have invented Arduino with no mention of us four. They even started printing this new URL on all the new boards.
The last straw came a few weeks ago when this person gave interviews to a number of Italian newspapers claiming to be the new CEO of “Arduino” and implying that I was stepping down to dedicate myself to “non profit” activities.
As usual the only real home of the Arduino community is arduino.cc and you can see on day.arduino.cc that the upcoming Arduino Day on March 28 is going to be an amazing global event during which we’re going to unveil a lot of cool stuff.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adafruit And The Arduinos At Maker Faire
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/18/adafruit-and-the-arduinos-at-maker-faire/
The apparent lull on the Arduino front the last few weeks was just the calm before the storm that is the Bay Area Maker Faire (BAMF). Both companies claiming the Arduino name were there over the weekend, with news and new products in tow. Ironically, you could see from one booth straight over to the other. Small world.
Perhaps the biggest news from Arduino LLC is that hacker-friendly Adafruit is now going to be making officially-licensed boards in the US. Competing with this news, Arduino SRL brought its new boards, including the Yun Mini and ARM-powered Arduino M0. And [Massimo Banzi] and Arduino LLC seem to be taking an end-run around the Arduino SRL trademark by announcing the “Genuino” brand for European production. For all the details, read on!
As announced by [Massimo] in his “State of the Arduino” keynote speech at the BAMF, Arduino is licensing Adafruit to produce a range of the “most-requested” Arduino boards at their factory in New York.
Adafruit partnered with Arduino LLC to create the Gemma board, which is basically an ATTiny85-based Arduino-a-like in a tiny round, wearable-friendly board.
Arduino SRL had its Yun Mini, which is essentially a smaller version of the Yun — a mashup of an Arduino Leonardo with an OpenWRT-capable router chipset
The M0 is interesting. Before the troubles began, Arduino designed an ARM-M0+ based board with Atmel. Now Arduino LLC has it listed on their website as the Arduino Zero, but still hasn’t got any for sale yet.
Both of the Arduino companies are working on getting your Arduino development into “the cloud”. (Conscience compels us to note that “the cloud” is actually just other people’s computers.) Anyway, this essentially means new web-based and browser-based versions of the IDE that tie into web services. Interestingly enough, the two companies have different takes on what that entails.
Arduino SRL will be launching a web portal for makers to “promote and distribute their products” and share code and ideas. Located at my.arduino.org
Meanwhile, Arduino LLC displayed previously announced their alternative development platform, Arduino Create. Arduino Create lets you write, compile and upload sketches “directly from the browser with the Arduino Web Editor”, and store your code in the “Arduino Cloud”.
We already use blogs, Hackaday.io (shameless plug!), Github, and other “cloud” services to store our projects and code, so we’re not entirely sure what either of these portal offerings will bring to the table. It’s 2015, is anyone still hurting for project hosting space on the web?
Cynically, we note that both of these companies are in a battle to “own” the Arduino community and that getting people to host code and projects on their servers is an obvious strategy, and providing a web-based IDE to facilitate this capture is the tactic.
Finally, as if it weren’t bad enough with Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL, [Massimo Banzi] also announced that licensed boards for the European market will be sold under the new “Genuino”.
Actually, this is a pretty cagey maneuver, because it side-steps the European trademark issues (which [Massimo] referred to as “the bullsh*t” in his talk)
If Arduino LLC loses the trademark lawsuit in Italy, they’ll not be allowed to sell boards using the “Arduino” name. The best way to limit the damage in the future is to make the switch now
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino vs Arduino: These Are Not The Droids…
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/22/arduino-vs-arduino-these-are-not-the-droids/
We’ve been trying to not pick favorites in the Arduino controversy, or at least remain open-minded to both sides of the story. Some businesses, on the other hand, are clearly aligning themselves.
Finally, we’ve got to say that “the old website should no longer be used” is pretty rich: we’re hackers, we use whatever software / IDE we like, thank you very much! No matter how the legal battles end up, and no matter who tells you to use what codebase, the beauty of open source is that it’s up to you, and not them. Hack on, y’all!
Tomi Engdahl says:
USA-made Arduinos are now shipping. That’s the Massimo Arduino, by the way.
Arduino Uno assembled in US now available in the Store
https://blog.arduino.cc/2015/07/04/arduino-uno-assembled-in-us-now-available-in-the-store/
We are proud to share with you the link to purchase the first batch of Arduino Uno ($24.95) assembled in US by Adafruit and created by #TeamArduinoCC.
The partnership started last May when Massimo announced it during Maker Faire San Mateo. Right after our team at Arduino and Adafruit team did all the best they could the make it happen on July the 4th, Independence Day!
If you take a close look at the back of the board, you’ll find the “Assembled in USA” tag and also the new Genuino logo, Arduino sister-brand. We are adding the Genuino logo to make it easier for the Arduino community to spot original boards and we are going to include this logo to all genuine Arduino boards from now on (like we did for the recently-released Arduino Zero).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hackaday’s Interview with Arduino CEO [Massimo Banzi]
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/07/hackadays-interview-with-massimo-banzi/
The big news from Arduino at SZMF is a new partnership with Seeed Studio to manufacture theGenuino. This is an official Arduino board manufactured in China for the Chinese market. Knowing that the board is official and connected to the founders is key point to get makers to adopt this hardware. [Massimo] makes a good point about the ideal of “Proudly Made in China” which I could see as a selling point for the burgeoning maker market there.
[Massimo] belives the current Arduino strife has actually served to move the project forward. He cites the schism between arduino.cc and arduino.org for catalyzing manufacturing partnerships with both Adafruit Industries and Seeed Studios. This has resulted in official Arduino hardware that is not made only in Italy, but made in the region the hardware will be used; NYC for US orders, Shenzhen for China orders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
[Federico Musto] of Arduino SRL Discusses Arduino Legal Situation
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/23/hackaday-interviews-federico-musto-of-arduino-srl/
Recently we had the opportunity to sit down and interview Arduino SRL’s CEO, [Federico Musto], over a nice dinner. His company is one half of the Arduino vs Arduino debacle which has pitted Arduino.cc against Arduino.org in a battle over the trademark on “Arduino”.
Given the tremendous amount of press coverage of [Massimo Banzi] and the Arduino LLC side of the story (Arduino.cc), we were very interested in hearing how the whole situation looks where [Frederico Musto] sit (Arduino.org). In the end, we came away with what we feel is a more balanced and complete picture of the situation, as well as interesting news about future products from the Arduino SRL camp. [Musto’s] take on the legal proceedings, both past and present, is nothing short of fascinating.
The central issue of the Arduino schism is who owns the trademark to the “Arduino” brand. In the USA this is currently Arduino LLC, although Arduino SRL filed a petition to invalidate this trademark and this isn’t likely to be resolved until early 2016. (Naturally, Arduino LLC has mounted its own counter-suit in the States.)
In Italy, Switzerland, and probably the rest of the world, the trademark appears to belong to Smart Projects, now Arduino SRL. This is because Smart Projects filed for the trademark in Italy in December 2008, just months after the legal incorporation of Arduino LLC, which only got around to filing in the Spring of 2009. This is, naturally, also being contested in Italian courts by Arduino LLC.
That’s the mess. How did we get in it? Arduino LLC claims that [Gianluca Martino] didn’t inform them of the Italian trademark until it was granted in 2010.
2008 was the year of the big Arduino breakout. Sales had crossed over 100 boards per day and Smart Projects was having a hard time keeping up with demand. At this point, it started to look like there was real money to be made in Arduino, both for companies with scruples offering Arduino add-on shields, and for companies without scruples selling Arduino-branded knockoffs of the “official” boards. How to handle the clones and make money off of the Arduino brand was on everyone’s mind within the Arduino group, but there was disagreement about just how to do it.
Lawsuits have been the order of the day, and it turns out we only knew about the tip of the iceberg.
Community Splits and Code Forks
In short, [Musto] explains a lot of the controversial actions on the part of Smart Projects / Arduino SRL as being a reaction to internal disagreements within the Arduino group, and subsequent aggressive actions by Arduino LLC. Contrary to the innocent picture of Arduino LLC painted by [Banzi], it’s clear that there’s been skulduggery on both sides of the aisle.
The Future
Until early 2016, when the USPTO ruling comes down, the two firms are in limbo. Ironically, this hasn’t really affected the end-hacker (read: us) at all. If anything, both firms have been doubling their efforts to sway us with not only their press propaganda, but also with their product and software offerings.
An Arduino Foundation?
Given that Arduino SRL and Arduino LLC may not ever settle their differences amicably, what is to become of the Arduino brand? [Musto] suggests a Solomonic solution: take control of “Arduino” out of the hands of any one person or company leave it up to a community-directed foundation.
[Musto] told us that he envisions an “Arduino Foundation” with clear and open balance sheets and a democratic governance structure. Think Mozilla Foundation mashed-up with Debian’s governance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino.cc Expands European Manufacturing
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/22/arduino-cc-expands-european-manufacturing/
Maker Faire Rome is over, and that means it’s time for the Arduino media blitz. Arduino has already had a big announcement this week with the introduction of the Arduino / Genuino 101 board powered by the Intel Curie module. Team .cc hasn’t forgotten all their Atmel-powered boards though. The latest news is that Arduinos will be manufactured in Germany by Watterott Electronics (.de, Google Translate).
Right now, Arduino.cc boards are manufactured in China by Seeed, and in the US by Adafruit and Sparkfun. Watterott Electronics is one of the premier hobby electronics distributors in Germany.
Boards made by Watterott will carry the Genuino mark; Arduino.cc seems to anticipate a loss in the Arduino vs. Arduino trademark dispute outside the US.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Federico Musto of Arduino SRL Shows Us New Products and New Directions
http://hackaday.com/2016/01/04/new-products-and-new-directions-an-interview-with-federico-musto-of-arduino-srl/
The big story from our meeting, that [Federico] actually hinted at before, is the release of the Uno WiFi. How many projects have you seen on Hackaday that are based on an Arduino Uno with an ESP8266 WiFi module plugged into it? A bazillion. The Uno and ESP8266 are like the peanut butter and jelly of the last few years’ hacker zeitgeist.
The Uno WiFi, then, is the Goober Grape (not an endorsement, you consume this stuff at your own risk). Less poetically put, Arduino has soldered the ESP8266 onto the Arduino Uno for you: no fiddling around with modules and pin-headers necessary. It’s not a ground-breaking innovation, but this is the kind of smart, community-led development that we like to see. You wanted cheap and easy WiFi on your Arduino? You got it.
Indeed, since the Arduino Yun came out, a lot of hackers were using it as a simple way to get their Arduino onto a wireless network: IoT and all that. When the ESP8266 hit the scene, many thought that the Yun looked dead in the water: with the ESP chip, you could get WiFi on your Arduino for half the price.
With the addition of the Uno WiFi, both the simple IoT devices and the more demanding applications can stay within the Arduino family. Go with the Uno WiFi if you want something networked but simple that the standard AVR ATmega328 processor can handle easily. If you actually need the extra computational power and flexibility of an embedded Linux distribution in addition to the ATmega, go for the Yun.
The Arduino Tian is a neat new board, in our opinion. It’s got an integrated MIPS processor with 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi on board, as well as being able to do Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE. It runs faster than the Yun by a bit
We can’t decide if the Tian (or the Yun, for that matter) is a microcontroller with a Linux computer tacked on, or a Linux computer with a microcontroller to handle GPIO.
The Tian has only been available for about a month now.
The Yun, the Tian, and the China-only Lei boards all feature an OpenWRT-based Linux distribution onboard as well as WiFi connectivity. They also managed to get the entire GCC compilation chain compiling natively on the MIPS cores. It shouldn’t be too much more work to get a cross-compiler for the microcontroller up and running on the Arduino’s Linux side.
Arduino UNO WiFi
http://labs.arduino.org/Arduino+UNO+WiFi
The Arduino Uno WiFi is the new Arduino Uno with the WiFi module!
The board is based on the ATmega328 (datasheet) and it has integrated the ESP8266 WiFi Module (datasheet).
It has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.
The ESP8266 WiFi Module is a self contained SOC with integrated TCP/IP protocol stack that can give access to your WiFi network.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wiring was Arduino before Arduino
http://hackaday.com/2016/03/04/wiring-was-arduino-before-arduino/
Hernando Barragán is the grandfather of Arduino of whom you’ve never heard. And after years now of being basically silent on the issue of attribution, he’s decided to get some of his grudges off his chest and clear the air around Wiring and Arduino. It’s a long read, and at times a little bitter, but if you’ve been following the development of the Arduino vs Arduino debacle, it’s an important piece in the puzzle.
Wiring, in case you don’t know, is where digitalWrite() and company come from. Maybe even more importantly, Wiring basically incubated the idea of building a microcontroller-based hardware controller platform that was simple enough to program that it could be used by artists. Indeed, it was intended to be the physical counterpart to Processing, a visual programming language for art.
The short version is that Arduino was basically a fork of the Wiring software, re-branded and running on a physical platform that borrowed a lot from the Wiring boards
From Wiring to Arduino
WiringBoard-AssembledSo by 2004, Barragán had a few prototypes of Wiring boards out, and he and his fellow students were using them informally for projects. The GUI will look ridiculously familiar if you’ve used Processing or Arduino. Since the students were already familiar with Processing, it made a lot of sense to just clone it — with Casey Reas’ blessing of course. Barragán wrote a little program that maybe you’ve heard of: Blink.
Giving Arduino its Due
It is not the case that Arduino doesn’t acknowledge Wiring at all. They do. There are a few sentences in the first paragraph of the Credits section of the website, as mentioned above.
The Arduino project has been marketed with extreme savvy, something that cannot be said of Wiring.
The Untold History of Arduino
http://arduinohistory.github.io/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Federico Musto of Arduino SRL Shows Off New ARM-based Arduino Boards
http://hackaday.com/2016/05/27/federico-musto-of-arduino-srl-shows-new-arm-based-arduino-boards/
The new boards are called Arduino Primo, Arduino Core, Arduino Alicepad, and Arduino Otto.
The first up is the Primo, a board built to adhere to the UNO form factor. This one is packing an interesting punch. The main micro is not an Atmel chip, but a Nordic nRF52832 ARM Cortex-M4F chip. Besides being a significantly fast CPU with floating-point support, the Nordic IC also has built-in Bluetooth LE and NFC capabilities, and the board has a PCB antenna built in.
On an UNO this is where the silicon would end. But on the Primo you get two more controllers: an ESP8266 and an STM32F103. The former is obvious, it brings WiFi to the party (including over-the-air programming). The STM32 chip is there to provide peripheral control and debugging. Debugging is an interesting development and is hard to come by in the Arduino-sphere. This will use the OpenOCD standard, with platformio.org as the recommended GUI.
The same nRF52 microcontroller is present on the Arduino Core and the Alicepad, which are targeted at wearable electronics. The circular form factor of the Alicepad mimics the familiar sewable form of the Lilypad
Arduino’s other offerings are where the horsepower really gets crazy. The Otto board boasts a gigantic STM32F469: a 169-pin ARM Cortex-M4F clocked at 180 MHz.
PlatformIO is an open source ecosystem for IoT development
Cross-platform build system. Continuous and IDE integration. Arduino and ARM mbed compatible
http://platformio.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Lawsuits
Federico spoke a little bit about the conflict between the two Arduinos, and said that it was brewing inside the company long before he got there. And it does appear that both companies calling themselves Arduino are trying to outdo each other with new boards and new initiatives, and going in different directions. If there is a bright side, it’s that this competition may end up building us better hardware than a single company would, because both are making bets on what will put them out ahead of the game.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2016/05/27/federico-musto-of-arduino-srl-shows-new-arm-based-arduino-boards/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pimoroni Wash Their Hands Of Arduino
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/11/pimoroni-wash-their-hands-of-arduino/
One of the big stories of last year was the fracture of the official Arduino supply into two competing organisations at daggers drawn, each headed by a different faction with its origins in the team that gave us the popular single board computers. Since then we’ve had Arduinos from Arduino LLC (the [Massimo] Arduino.cc, arguably the ‘original’, and Arduino trademark holder in the United States) and Arduino SRL (the [Musto] Arduino.org, and owner of the Arduino trademark everywhere except the US) , two websites, two forks of the IDE, and “real” Arduino boards available under a couple of names depending on where in the world you live due to a flurry of legal manoeuvres. Yes. it’s confusing.
Today came news of a supplier throwing its hands up in despair at the demands imposed on them as part of this debacle. Pimoroni, famous as supplier of Raspberry Pi goodies, has put up a blog post explaining why they will henceforth no longer be selling Arduinos.
Why we won’t be selling Genuino or Arduino any more
http://blog.pimoroni.com/why-we-wont-be-selling-genuino-arduino-any-more/
It started with a split
After the split of Arduino and Arduino (brief explanation here) we sided with the camp that has setup shop as Ardunio LLC in America and rebranded to Genuino in the EU.
We believed (and we still do) that they are the true heart of Arduino and we wanted to support them.
In fact we were very eager to support them!
Ten months to make first contact
After some to-ing and fro-ing to get the “confidential” reseller price list (*sigh* do we still do that?) we finally managed to place an order on January 5th 2016 – almost a full year after our first attempts to make contact.
Wait a minute… we can’t sell Genuino branded boards into the US? What the heck
They know how the internet works right? That it is possible for someone to order a product from *gasp* another country and indeed for that very product to be physically delivered across country borders with almost no hassle!
“Unfortunately, we cannot grant the authorisation to sell Genuino within the US, as we want to keep the 2 brands separated. So if you are already doing it I will have to ask you to stop Genuino sales towards the US immediately.”
“However, I can introduce you to our representative in the US, if you wish to purchase some Arduino boards for the US market.”
You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.
EU resellers have already taken the hit of shifting to an unknown brand (Genuino) which has no marketing value to support you and this is how you repay them?
In closing…
It’s a real shame that Arduino LLC seem to have lost any of the Maker-vibe it had.
Here are some tips:
Don’t make resellers stock twice as many SKUs for no reason. It hurts their ability to stock your product which is dumb.
Everyone sells worldwide now. This agreement affects pretty much all of your resellers. They should be angry (I know we are).
Adding confusion to the buying process for customers is just stupid. This is basically the number one golden rule in sales.
We kicked back on the terms. But how many of your non-US resellers are just ignoring the rule? Hint: lots of them.
It’s bad enough we have to deal with an unknown brand in Genuino. But we will, to support you. Just don’t make it worse.
No one else cares about this. Not resellers, customers, or existing users. Only you. It might be worth thinking about that.
So there it is. Once our stock of Genuino boards runs out then they’re gone.
Luckily there are heaps of great Arduino-compatible alternatives
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Arduino Foundation: What’s Up?
http://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/the-arduino-foundation-whats-up/
The Arduino Wars officially ended last October, and the new Arduino-manufacturing company was registered in January 2017. At the time, we were promised an Arduino Foundation that would care for the open-source IDE and code infrastructure in an open and community-serving manner, but we don’t have one yet. Is it conspiracy? Or foul play? Our advice: don’t fret. These things take time.
But on the other hand, the Arduino community wants to know what’s going on, and there’s apparently some real confusion out there about the state of play in Arduino-land, so we interviewed the principals, Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto, and asked them for a progress report.
The short version is that there are still two “Arduinos”: Arduino AG, a for-profit corporation, and the soon-to-be Arduino Foundation, a non-profit in charge of guiding and funding software and IDE development. The former was incorporated in January 2017, and the latter is still in progress but looks likely to incorporate before the summer is over.
It’s far too early to tell just how independent the Foundation is going to be, or should be, of the company that sells the boards under the same name. Setting up the Foundation correctly is extremely important for the future of Arduino, and Banzi said to us in an interview that he wouldn’t take on the job of president unless it is done right. What the Arduino community doesn’t need right now is a Foundation fork.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A NEW ERA FOR ARDUINO BEGINS TODAY
https://blog.arduino.cc/2017/07/28/a-new-era-for-arduino-begins-today/
Arduino Team — July 28th, 2017
BCMI, the company founded by Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis and Tom Igoe, co-founders of Arduino, announces that today it has acquired 100% ownership of Arduino AG, the corporation which owns all of the Arduino trademarks.
Following the acquisition, Mr. Massimo Banzi becomes the new Chairman and CTO of Arduino. Dr. Fabio Violante will be appointed as the new CEO, replacing Mr. Federico Musto who will pursue other opportunities outside Arduino AG.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Acquisition Opens Up a New Chapter for Arduino
Banzi Named Chairman and CTO
https://blog.hackster.io/acquisition-opens-up-a-new-chapter-for-arduino-bd72b404d208
Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis and Tom Igoe, co-founders of Arduino, have announced that their company, BCMI, has acquired 100% ownership of Arduino AG — the corporation which owns all of the Arduino trademarks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arduino vs. Arduino: Musto Out, Banzi In
http://hackaday.com/2017/07/28/arduino-vs-arduino-musto-out-banzi-in/
Federico Musto, who until two days ago owned the largest part of Arduino AG has been bought out, having today been replaced by a combination of Massimo Banzi and Fabio Violante.
This should bring to a close the saga that began with a fork where two companies called themselves “Arduino” and bizarrely continued for almost a year after the reconciliation of the two was announced. What remains today is one corporation called Arduino AG, now captained by Massimo Banzi as Chairman and CTO, and Fabio Violante as CEO.
Massimo Banzi was one of the original founders of Arduino and one side of the trademark litigation during the period in which there were two companies. With the buyout of Musto, Banzi moves back to the top spot. This change in leadership occurred as a company called BCMI bought all shares of Arduino AG. BCMI was started by four of the original Arduino co-founders; you could say the old gang rides again.
A new era for Arduino begins today
https://blog.arduino.cc/2017/07/28/a-new-era-for-arduino-begins-today/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Federico Musto is out as Arduino CEO
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/01/federico-musto-is-out-as-arduino-ceo/?ncid=rss
Last week Arduino AG, the holding company for the open source Arduino project, announced that CEO Federico Musto stepped down, to be replaced with Massimo Banzi as new Chairman and CTO of Arduino and Dr. Fabio Violante as CEO.
The move comes after the maker community found troubling discrepancies in Musto’s educational claims.
The maker community vocally complained about former CEO Musto’s claims to be an NYU and MIT graduate and worried about the future of the open source project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who Owns Arduino?
https://hackaday.com/2017/10/05/who-owns-arduino/
Who owns Arduino? We don’t mean metaphorically — we’d say that’s the community of users and developers who’ve all contributed to this amazing hardware/software ecosystem. We mean literally. Whose chips are on the table? Whose money talks? It looks like ARM could have a stake!
The Arduino vs Arduino saga “ended” just under a year ago with an out-of-court settlement that created a private holding company part-owned by both parties in the prior dispute over the trademark. And then, [Banzi] and the original founders bought out [Musto]’s shares and took over. That much is known fact.
The murky thing about privately held companies and out-of-court settlements is that all of the details remain private, so we can only guess from outside. We can speculate, however, that buying out half of the Arduino AG wasn’t cheap, and that even pooling all of their resources together, the original founders just didn’t have the scratch to buy [Musto] out. Or as the Arduino website puts it, “In order to make [t]his a reality, we needed a partner that would provide us with the resources to regain full ownership of Arduino as a company… and Arm graciously agreed to support us to complete the operation.” That, and the rest of the Arduino blog post, sure looks like ARM provided some funds to buy back Arduino.
We frankly can’t make sense of these conflicting statements, at least regarding whether ARM did or didn’t contribute monetary resources to the deal. ARM has no press release on the deal as we write this.
Announcing a partnership without details isn’t a new activity for Arduino. Recently we wrote about open questions on the Arduino Foundation. [Banzi] was willing to speak with Hackaday at length about that topic, suggesting more details were just weeks away but we have yet to see follow-through on that.
What we can tell is that [Banzi] and Arduino want us to know that they’re still independent.
Anyway, the various ARM chips are nice to work with from a hacker perspective. If the AVR-based UNO was the last non-ARM Arduino board ever made, we’d only shed a tiny little tear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/01/the-medieval-history-of-your-favourite-dev-board/