Arduino

= open source electronics prototyping platform

URL = http://www.arduino.cc

"Arduino, the Italian firm that makes this circuit board, a hot commodity among DIY gadget-builders. The electronics factory is one of the most picturesque in existence, nestled in the medieval foothills of Milan" (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing?)

Description

1.

"Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators.

The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP)."

2.

"At its heart, Arduino is a programmable microcontroller, which was developed in Italy in 2005. You can connect the microcontroller via a serial or USB connection to a computer running Windows, Mac OS or Linux, and program it using the free open-source integrated development environment.

Arduino is often described as a physical computing platform because you can use sensors to measure motion, light or temperature, and to flash LEDs or lights, sound buzzers or run motors. Arduino also has communications extensions that add Bluetooth, Ethernet or wireless-mesh networking capabilities, and can be triggered by events on the web or via web APIs.

During the Guardian's recent hack day, Arduino was used to create a robot that responded to hashtags on Twitter. It powered a device to alert journalists when people were reading their stories, and the team from Arduino consultancy Tinker.it built a leaderboard that measured responses to the Twitter accounts of the main British political parties.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, CEO of Tinker.it, says all kinds of people are using the platform, including hobbyists and engineers but also artists and designers – people who don't have a technical background. Clothing designers even use Arduino with special circuit boards that can easily be sewn into fabric.

You can buy pre-built Arduino boards or, true to the open-source movement, can download plans and build your own. To rapidly create prototype projects many Arduino enthusiasts use solder-less breadboards. To get started Deschamps-Sonsino suggests going to the "playground" on the Arduino website. It has a list of projects broken down by difficulty and purpose. For instance, there are audio, visual, and communication projects, as well as physical or mechanical projects.

Tinker.it and other Arduino suppliers, such as SparkFun in the US, can sell you microcontrollers, lights, sensors and other components for the projects. Tinker.it also holds workshops, and with hardware hacker Maker Faires you can see what's possible with Arduino and other open-source hardware platforms." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/open-source-hardware-projects)

3.

From a detailed reportage on the place of Arduino in the Italian tradition of interaction design, by Nathan Waddington and Russell Taylor:

"The Arduino platform is fast becoming a platform of choice for interaction designers, and open source is a big part of that choice, even if it is an unintentional (or unknown) part of that choice. Open source allows for effective iterative design and creates a community out of the users. Physical computing specifically is not interaction design, but it is becoming more and more an integrated part of interaction design. During the summer of 2007, the Italy Design SFU Field School went to Italy and interviewed several top Italian designers. Among them was Massimo Banzi, an interaction designer who helped to design the Arduino. He took the time to tour the field school participants through the manufacturing process, the factory where the boards are made and assembled, gave a lecture on his previous (and current) works and finally, agreed to be interviewed for the project. Much of this paper derives from those tours and interviews. It is clear that around Massimo a community of young designers is growing, working in ways unfamiliar in Italy. This is yet another place where we see new growth in Italian Design.

So, what is Arduino? The Arduino is a tool. A little computer that can help designers interact with the physical world. Ostensibly though, it’s not much more than any other similar platform; what makes it special is how it’s been designed and supported. “Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.

It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments” (Arduino, 2007). The key is its intention – intended for artists and designers, two groups of people whose backgrounds aren’t necessarily technical ones (or if they are, they aren’t likely to be deep in embedded computing). So, in the city where Olivetti once stood (it is now a part of Telecom Italia), the designers of Arduino substituted corporate ownership and support with community and openness. This shift is what makes the Arduino accessible, and it is what has caused its rapid growth and popularity in the communities using it. So why was it developed?

“Physical computing is about creating a conversation between the physical world and the virtual world of the computer” (O’Sullivan & Igoe, 2004, pp xix). The Arduino was developed initially to help students at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea to develop projects of their own. The students needed a platform to build their interactive projects on which would ease the burden of entering into the physical computing realm. Students with limited computing knowledge could program working prototypes themselves and take radical ideas developed in the hothouse of a good design school into stuff that actually worked and could be used and played with by an audience. Traditionally physical computing has been the domain of computer science students, professional programmers and hardware developers who use other kinds of basic hardware (such as a basic stamp, a kind of hardware platform with basic components sufficient to run an application, CPU, memory, etc.) to deal with sensor input and output to devices. However, now the barriers to entry have been significantly reduced with the Arduino, as the hardware is very cheap and readily available and the software is much more forgiving and user-friendly than that of other hardwares. Using Arduino, students can get up and running quite a bit faster than they otherwise could.

And for many that becomes addictive and professionally valuable. The Ivrea students for instance have had great success getting work at Interaction Design stalwarts such as IDEO London. And of course, all these people using the boards has fed back into the production process for improving the boards through the company’s open source development." (http://www.sfu.ca/italiadesign/2007/page/papers/arduino-and-open-source-design.pdf)

Source: Arduino and Open Source Design. By Nathan Waddington and Russell Taylor. URL = http://www.sfu.ca/italiadesign/2007/page/papers/arduino-and-open-source-design.pdf

Technical Status

"The Arduino prototyping platform is a good example of all this. It can be programmed to read sensors, control motors and build interactive objects and artistic installations. Its compiling environment is multiplatform and free (as in freedom) and the only extra hardware needed for programming it is a serial/ USB cable. This software can be downloaded from the website Arduino web site, which also contains Arduino schematics released under Creative Commons Attibution-ShareAlike. The project has used many ingredients to achieve a successful widely used project. For example, it contains a removable Atmega8 microcontroller which can be easily replaced if broken—without the need to buy a new Arduino board. Two years after its creation, you can see an expanding community of developers who support it, workshops all around the world, new plugins and modules like ArduinoXbee (ZigBee communications interface), Arduino BT (arduino with bluetooth connectivity), Arduino Mini or the recent Arduino GPS, and third party projects as SquidBee." (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/making_open_hardware_possible)

Discussion

Is Arduino Open Source?

Arduino has a trademarked name (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ),

but: Is Arduino open-source?

"Yes. The source code for the Java environment is released under the GPL, the C/C++ microcontroller libraries under the LGPL, and the schematics and CAD files under Creative Commons Attribution Share- Alike licenses. I want to design my own board; what should I do? The reference designs for the Arduino boards are available from the hardware page. They’re licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license, so you are free to use and adapt them for your own needs without asking permission or paying a fee. If you’re looking to make something of interest to the community, we’d encourage you to discuss your ideas on the hardware development forum so that potential users can offer suggestions. What should I call my boards? If you’re making your own board, come up with your own name! This will allow people identify you with your products and help you to build a brand. Be creative: try to suggest what people might use the board for, or emphasize the form factor, or just pick a random word that sounds cool. \”Arduino\” is a trademark of Arduino team and should not be used for unofficial variants. If you’re interested in having your design included in the official Arduino product line, please see the So you want to make an Arduino document and contact the Arduino team. Note that while we don’t attempt to restrict uses of the \”duino\” suffix, its use causes the Italians on the team to cringe (apparently it sounds terrible); you might want to avoid it." (http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/03/28/open-source-hardware-overview-slides/)

Arduino's Open Source Hardware business method

1.

"But today Banzi is all business. He's showing off his operation to a group of potential customers from Arizona. Banzi scoops up one of the boards and points to the tiny map of Italy emblazoned on it. "See? Italian manufacturing quality!" he says, laughing. "That's why everyone likes us!" Indeed, 50,000 Arduino units have been sold worldwide since mass production began two years ago. Those are small numbers by Intel standards but large for a startup outfit in a highly specialized market. What's really remarkable, though, is Arduino's business model: The team has created a company based on giving everything away. On its Web site, it posts all its trade secrets for anyone to take—all the schematics, design files, and software for the Arduino board. Download them and you can manufacture an Arduino yourself; there are no patents. You can send the plans off to a Chinese factory, mass-produce the circuit boards, and sell them yourself — pocketing the profit without paying Banzi a penny in royalties. He won't sue you. Actually, he's sort of hoping you'll do it.

That's because the Arduino board is a piece of open source hardware, free for anyone to use, modify, or sell. Banzi and his team have spent precious billable hours making the thing, and they sell it themselves for a small profit — while allowing anyone else to do the same. They're not alone in this experiment. In a loosely coordinated movement, dozens of hardware inventors around the world have begun to freely publish their specs. There are open source synthesizers, MP3 players, guitar amplifiers, and even high-end voice-over-IP phone routers. You can buy an open source mobile phone to talk on, and a chip company called VIA has just released an open source laptop: Anyone can take its design, fabricate it, and start selling the notebooks."

2.

"So the Arduino inventors decided to start a business, but with a twist: The designs would stay open source. Because copyright law—which governs open source software—doesn't apply to hardware, they decided to use a Creative Commons license called Attribution-Share Alike. It governs the "reference designs" for the Arduino board, the files you'd send to a fabrication plant to have the boards made.

Under the Creative Commons license, anyone is allowed to produce copies of the board, to redesign it, or even to sell boards that copy the design. You don't need to pay a license fee to the Arduino team or even ask permission. However, if you republish the reference design, you have to credit the original Arduino group. And if you tweak or change the board, your new design must use the same or a similar Creative Commons license to ensure that new versions of the Arduino board will be equally free and open.

The only piece of intellectual property the team reserved was the name Arduino, which it trademarked. If anyone wants to sell boards using that name, they have to pay a small fee to Arduino. This, Cuartielles and Banzi say, is to make sure their brand name isn't hurt by low-quality copies.

Members of the team had slightly different motives for opening the design of their device. Cuartielles—who sports a mass of wiry, curly hair and a Che Guevara beard—describes himself as a left-leaning academic who's less interested in making money than in inspiring creativity and having his invention used widely. If other people make copies of it, all the better; it will gain more renown. ("When I spoke in Taiwan recently, I told them, 'Please copy this!'" Cuartielles says with a grin.) Banzi, by contrast, is more of a canny businessman; he has mostly retired from teaching and runs a high tech design firm. But he suspected that if Arduino were open, it would inspire more interest and more free publicity than a piece of proprietary, closed hardware. What's more, excited geeks would hack it and—like Linux fans—contact the Arduino team to offer improvements. They would capitalize on this free work, and every generation of the board would get better.

Sure enough, that's what happened. Within months, geeks suggested wiring changes and improvements to the programming language. One distributor offered to sell the boards. By 2006, Arduino had sold 5,000 units; the next year, it sold 30,000. Hobbyists used them to create robots, to fine-tune their car engines for ultrahigh mileage, and to build unmanned model airplanes. Several quirky companies emerged. A firm called Botanicalls developed an Arduino-powered device that monitors house plants and phones you when they need to be watered.

In one sense, Arduino's timing was perfect. There's a resurgence of DIY among geeks interested in hacking and improving hardware, fueled by ever-cheaper electronics they can buy online, build-it-yourself publications like Make magazine, and Web sites like Instructables. In recent years, hackers have been aggressively cracking consumer devices to improve them—adding battery life to iPhones, installing bigger hard drives on TiVos, and ripping apart Furby toys and reprogramming them to function as motion-sensing alarm bots. Inexpensive chip-reading tools make it possible to reverse-engineer almost anything.

This is the unacknowledged fact underpinning the open hardware movement: Hardware is already open. Even when inventors try to keep the guts of their gadgets secret, they can't. So why not actively open those designs and try to profit from the inevitable?

"Apple never open-sourced the iPod, right? But if you go down to Canal Street in Manhattan, there are copies all over the place." (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing?)

Two Open Source Hardware Business models

1.

"Right now, open design pioneers tend to follow one of two economic models. The first is not to worry about selling much hardware but instead to sell your expertise as the inventor. If anyone can manufacture a device, then the most efficient manufacturer will do so at the best price. Fine, let them. It'll ensure your contraption is widely distributed. Because you're the inventor, though, the community of users will inevitably congregate around you, much as Torvalds was the hub for Linux. You will always be the first to hear about cool improvements or innovative uses for your device. That knowledge becomes your most valuable asset, which you can sell to anyone.

This is precisely how the Arduino team works. It makes little off the sale of each board—only a few dollars of the $35 price, which gets rolled into the next production cycle. But the serious income comes from clients who want to build devices based on the board and who hire the founders as consultants.

"Basically, what we have is the brand," says Tom Igoe, an associate professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, who joined Arduino in 2005. "And brand matters."

What's more, the growing Arduino community performs free labor for the consultants. Clients of Banzi's design firm often want him to create Arduino-powered products. For example, one client wanted to control LED arrays. Poking around online, Banzi found that someone in France had already published Arduino code that did the job. Banzi took the code and was done."

2.

"Then there's the second model for making money off open source hardware: Sell your device but try to keep ahead of the competition. This isn't as hard as it seems. Last year, Arduino noticed that copycat versions of its board made in China and Taiwan were being sold online. Yet sales through the main Arduino store were still increasing dramatically. Why?

Partly because many Asian knockoffs were poor quality, rife with soldering errors and flimsy pin connections. The competition created a larger market but also ensured that the original makers stayed a generation ahead of the cheap imitations. Merely having the specs for a product doesn't mean a copycat will make a quality item. That takes skill, and the Arduino team understood its device better than just about anyone else. "So the copycats can actually turn out to be good for our business," Igoe says." (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing?)

More Information

1. Full directory of Open Hardware projects via: Product Hacking
2. Listen to Massimo Banzi on Arduino
3. Book: Getting Started with Arduino