Slashdot Mirror

"Today is one of the best days in Arduino history," announced Massimo Banzi, Co-Founder of Arduino LLC, calling it "a new beginning" for Ardunio. Slashdot reader ruhri reports: Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto, co-founders of the Arduino Project, announced they have settled their differences that had resulted in the creation of Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL. A new, unified Arduino Holding and Arduino Foundation will be created.
"Massimo Banzi and Federico Musto took the stage today at the New York Maker Faire to announce the good news," reports a blog post at Arudino.cc. "At the end of 2016, the newly created 'Arduino Holding' will become the single point of contact for the wholesale distribution of all current and future products... In addition, Arduino will form a not-for-profit 'Arduino Foundation' responsible for maintaining the open source Arduino desktop IDE, and continuing to foster the open source movement by providing support for a variety of scholarships, community and developer initiatives."

An anonymous reader writes: Johan Kanflo has managed to make the already small Tiny328 Arduino clone into an even smaller computing platform about the size of a single AA battery. Not only will it fit in a typical AA battery holder, but it will actually draw power from the batteries beside it as it's wired in "backwards" (with the + and - poles reversed). The Arduino platform consists of open-source hardware, open-source software, and microcontroller-based kits, making it easy to (re)program the processors, and develop software for hardware applications using a java-clone and an easy-to-learn IDE. For those interested in the AAduino, Johan has made his creation available online on Github with instructions and schematics to build your own.

kodiaktau writes: Hardkernel has released a new Raspberry Pi-compatible development board based on the Samsung Exynos SoC. The board is smaller than a typical Pi, keeping basic HDMI, USB and CSI interfaces. It also has a 26-pin expansion board with more GPIO available, though it lacks an Ethernet jack. Initial prices as estimated around $30. The article makes the interesting point that this and other devices are marketed as "Raspberry Pi-compatible." The Raspberry Pi Foundation may run into name retention issues (similar to the ones Arduino had) as related hardware piggybacks on its success.

DeviceGuru writes "At the Maker Faire Rome this week, Arduino announced a next-generation Arduino single board computer featuring a dual-processor architecture, and able to run a 'full Linux OS', in contrast to the lightweight OpenWRT Linux variant (Linino) buried inside the Yun's Atheros WiFi module. The Arduino TRE features a 1GHz 32-bit TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SoC for running Linux software, plus an 8-bit Atmel ATmega MCU for AVR-compatible control of expansion modules (aka shields). The TRE's Sitara subsystem includes HDMI video, 100Mbps Ethernet, and 5 USB 2.0 ports, and is claimed to provide up to 100X the performance the Arduino Leonardo and Uno boards. Interestingly, the TRE's development reportedly benefited from close collaboration between Arduino and the BeagleBoard.org foundation."

beefsack writes "An engineer by the name of Andrej Skraba has combined an Arduino board and an MK802 mini PC running Ubuntu to create a robot which is controllable via its own node.js server and a mobile phone. Seen by some as products competing in a similar space, Andrej shows how the two devices can make the most of their unique features to complement each other, working together."

jfruhlinger writes "Tired of your code only executing in digital space? Why not hack your smiling snowman? OK, this crash course only shows you how to make pretty LED lights blink in a sequence of your choosing, but it serves to introduce you to Arduino, an open-source platform that uses C-like code. Really, any project that involves a soldering iron is good fun."

mikejuk writes "The whole world seems to be going in ARM's direction. The latest version of Windows 8 will run on ARM processors, Raspberry Pi is a $25 ARM based machine and now the open source Arduino platform has a new member — the ARM-based Arduino Due announced at the Maker Faire in New York. The Due makes use of Atmel's SAM3U ARM-based process, which supports 32-bit instructions and runs at 96Mhz. The Due will have 256KB of Flash, 50KB of SRAM, five SPI buses, two I2C interfaces, five serial ports, 16 12-bit analog inputs and more. This is much more powerful than the current Uno or Mega. However, it's not all gain — the 3.3V operating voltage and the different I/O ports are going to create some compatibility problems. Perhaps Intel should start to worry about the lower end of the processor world."

An anonymous reader writes "A calculator enthusiast has managed to allow TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus graphing calculators to connect to the Internet with the help of an Arduino board. It is called Global CALCnet 2.2 and there is already a chat program demonstrating it. Multi-player games for gCn such as a Scorched-Earth clone are currently in the works. Maybe in the near future we will be playing some variant of Ztetris against our friends on the other side of the world?" Somebody also took the time to port Doom to a TI-Nspire calculator. A YouTube video demonstration is available.

Xistic writes "For many years tool assisted speedruns were purely theoretical and the domain of emulators. No longer! Using an Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller to drive an actual Nintendo console, pjgat09 plays back prerecorded input to beat Super Mario Bros. in record time. The selection of possible games is limited: 'If the game relies on any uninitialized memory for randomness, or if it is heavily based on console timing, it may not work. In the case of Super Mario Bros however, as long as the button presses start play back at the right time, the movie will play back correctly.' The author includes complete instructions on how to setup the device."

ptorrone writes "For years, students, journalists, makers and old-school engineers have asked why the Arduino open source microcontroller platform has taken off, with over 100k units 'in the wild' — it's the platform of choice for many. MAKE's new column discusses why the Arduino has become so popular and why it's here to stay. And for anyone wanting to build an 'Arduino killer' (there are many) — MAKE outlines what they'll need to do."

Gibbs-Duhem writes "This awesome video was produced by some MIT engineers recently. They've started a fully open-source, open-hardware high power LED lighting project that they designed to be modular enough to control with the Arduino (or any other control system). Using their open-source firmware, you can set up the Arduino to connect to Wi-Fi and receive Open Sound Control packets. Then, they went further and released open-source software for PureData and Python to do music analysis and make the lights flash brilliantly in time with the music! A full Instructable was also posted in addition to the existing documentation for design and assembly on their website."

EqualSlash writes "The Arduino Project is releasing two new boards — Arduino Uno to replace Duemilanove and Arduino Mega 2560 to replace the existing Arduino Mega board. With Uno, the board is not just getting a new pronunciation-friendly name but also has a custom-made USB-serial converter to replace the older FTDI chipset, thereby removing the need to install drivers (they now have their own USB Vendor ID). It now has a logo and stylish packaging, and soon will have its own branded web store. A new Ethernet integrated board and a tinkering toolkit will be made available shortly."

EqualSlash writes "The Arduino Project is releasing two new boards — Arduino Uno to replace Duemilanove and Arduino Mega 2560 to replace the existing Arduino Mega board. With Uno, the board is not just getting a new pronunciation-friendly name but also has a custom-made USB-serial converter to replace the older FTDI chipset, thereby removing the need to install drivers (they now have their own USB Vendor ID). It now has a logo and stylish packaging, and soon will have its own branded web store. A new Ethernet integrated board and a tinkering toolkit will be made available shortly."

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has put together their 3rd annual 'State of Open Source Hardware 2008' — in just a few years, the number of projects has grown from a small handful to an amazing 60+ offerings. Similar to open source software, open source hardware is available with source code, schematics, firmware and bills of materials, and allows commercial use. The most popular project, Arduino, the open source prototyping platform for artists and engineers, has shipped over 60,000 units." The article is formatted such that the first link for a particular device will usually take you to the project home page. Some will bring you instead to where you can purchase the items, but most still have a "How To" tab which will direct you to guides and instructions on how to build your own gadgets. There are a bunch of interesting devices, from the Game of Life on the outside of a cube to a home-made MP3 player to OpenMoko.

ptorrone noted a Make article about twittering your plants just in case you need that sort of thing in your life. And you do. He says "The gang from Botanicalls used one of Adafruit's new open source hardware ethernet shields for Arduino (open hardware too) to make some plants talk — and now you can too! That's right, having your houseplants Twitter you when they need water and more! You can see what one of the plants is doing now..."