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Arduino SRL Turns Focus To New Connected Boards (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the doing-it-better dept.

szczys writes: Arduino has driven a tidal wave of embedded development over the last decade. But last year a rift formed in the shape of two companies — Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL — who are suing each other over trademark. While that is ongoing, each company is trying to outdo the other in terms of new hardware. Arduino SRL is now focusing on producing connected boards and will soon have several new offerings available. The Uno WiFi is a traditional Arduino with an ESP8266 WiFi chip on board. The Tian has a MIPS processor with 2.4 & 5 GHz WiFi making it a Linux single board computer with support for low level pin driving. And the Lei is somewhere in between the other two and only for the Chinese market (it would need FCC certification to be sold in the US). From the user side the trademark dispute looks like a waste of energy, but if it drives the companies to produce more boards and fight for followers on price and quality that may be the silver lining.

16 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Is Arduino dead? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

    With the Raspberry Pi Zero available for only 5 U.S. dollars, is the Arduino obsolete?

    1. Re:Is Arduino dead? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

      Doubt it - the Pi Zero needs bolt-ons to be very useful. (http://makezine.com/2015/11/28/chip-vs-pi-zero/) As another poster mentioned, the marketing strategy seems to be "flood the education market" kind of like Apple did back in the day - people actually building anything will probably steer clear of the Pi Zero.

    2. Re:Is Arduino dead? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      No. Next question.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:Is Arduino dead? by silas_moeckel · · Score: 2

      Nope the PI is a much higher level board running a multitasking operating system. You're not going to bit bang any but the most simple and slow interface reliably on that. Sure if your making LED blinky lights it's fine. Decode or send some proprietary RF coms not so much. Pretty much it's unsuitable for anything but realy basic relay type work.

      Mind you the useful uno clones are about $5 as well. ESP8266 also about $5 and the new ones are breadboard friendly as well thats a huge upgrade in CPU umph.

      --
      No sir I dont like it.
    4. Re:Is Arduino dead? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      With the Raspberry Pi Zero available for only 5 U.S. dollars,

      Most humans can not get their hands on a Pi Zero for 5 or even ten U.S. dollars.

      is the Arduino obsolete?

      No, especially since I actually can get one in my hands for about $3.50.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Is Arduino dead? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Don't know, do you make phone calls with your phone or with your PC?

      The Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are two different things with two very different purposes. One is a chip which can be programmed to perform actions in real time, the other is a ridiculously scaled down computer. Sure you can scale one up and the other down, but as always when you push something outside it's primary purpose you end up with something completely different.

    6. Re:Is Arduino dead? by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 2

      I make most of my calls with my PC. I either use skype, or I can get my apple to use my iPhone to make telco calls. I have a great headset so it is far more pleasant to use.

      But I agree, the arduino can be pushed surprisingly hard but I use it as basically a really cool IO port for something with a bigger brain that is easier to program.

    7. Re:Is Arduino dead? by sjames · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not even close, though it may see reduced application.

      Arduino (AVR) can operate at a wide range of voltages and doesn't need terribly close regulation. It can go down to extremely low power if the regulator and power LED is removed (The pro-mini offers a solder link that can be cut to do that easily). It is more robust than the Pi.

      Where more computation power is wanted and the above aren't as important, the Pi comes into play.

      They both have their place.

  2. Usurper! by Dracos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember, kids: SRL is the usurper Arduino that secretlyfiled the Arduino copyright and started dicking Banzi and Co (arduino.cc) out of royalties. This issue from April 2015 ("Rename this fork and use less confusing versioning") had its most recent comment 17 days ago.

  3. Why is Slashdot advertising for Arduino SRL? by NimbleSquirrel · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article completely brushes over the Trademark dispute, where if the facts were published it would become clear that ArduinoSRL (formerly Smart Projects) has been attempting to hijack the Arduino brand. ArduinoSRL/Smart Projects produced boards under license from Arduino.cc. In 2008 they sneakily registered the trademark in Italy just before Arduino.cc pursued registering the trademark internationally. Arduino.cc found out and tried to negotiate for the trademark that was rightfully theirs. Subsequently, Smart Projects stopped paying royalties to Arduino.cc, changed their name to ArduinoSRL, and have declared themselves the real Arduino. Funny thing is that the code they distribute to run their hardware is still from Arduino.cc

    1. Re: Why is Slashdot advertising for Arduino SRL? by sjames · · Score: 3, Informative

      That is absolutely NOT what AMD did. AMD negotiated in good faith with Intel when Intel needed there to be a second source for x86 in order to make some big government sales.

  4. ESP8266 is already Arduino compadible and only $2 by mmiscool · · Score: 3, Informative

    The esp8266 is already arduino compatible using the board manger in the arduino IDE. https://github.com/esp8266/Ard... Why go through the trouble making a board that has 2 microcontrollers on it when the ESP8266 has wifi, runs at 80 MHz and commonly comes in packages with 1,2 or 4 mb of flash memory for your program. Seems to me to be to little too late. http://www.banggood.com/NodeMc... http://www.banggood.com/ESP826... http://www.banggood.com/3Pcs-E... I feel like there needs to be a whole article on the ESP8266 on here.

  5. Re:ESP8266 is already Arduino compadible and only by mmiscool · · Score: 2

    http://slashdot.org/submission...

  6. Re:Arduino SRL deserves no support by sectokia · · Score: 2

    It would be interesting to know which of the two have pocketed all the money. I have done AVR boards nearly identical to arduino over the last decade+, and in 10k volume a avr board has about $1.20 in parts, a few dollars to assemble and individually package. Yet they were able to sell them for $30!! And people think Apple has big margins.... The avr Chips in volume are at least a hundred times cheaper than raspberry pi Chips. Arduino has made a fortune (i think SRL?). By tying the scoring language to the arduno name, they can sell boards that should be a few bucks for $30+. You can make a good living selling shield boards on kick starter for $20 a pop that are produced for a few bucks.

  7. Re:ESP8266 is already Arduino compadible and only by Lurks · · Score: 2

    It's difficult to overstate the importance of the ESP8266. It was marred a bit in the first place with the $5 modules that only had a serial interface and a firmware that spoke in AT-commands. This is paradoxically how these stupid AVR+ESP8266 boards work. They're worthless. The AT/serial firmware is buggy and unreliable and a complete waste of time.

    The thing that made the ESP8266 lift off is the breakout boards with USB serial onboard allowing direct programming of the device. For about $10 you can get one of these from China and then flash the NodeMCU firmware and write Lua on the thing. NodeMCU isn't universally loved, largely because it kind of sucked until more recent versions, but just imagine a scripting language with low-level hardware GPIO, I2C, SPI and of course WiFi. Proper IoT shit for $10 and they draw about 30mA when running flat out and sleep at much less. It's amazing.

    If Lua doesn't cut it, there's a really nice port of Arduino so you upload C code directly to the board with shitloads (but not all) of the Arduino support libraries you might want. For me, there's really only one usage case for 8-bit AVRs. That's the ATtiny85s run for about $3 on a board with USB (digisparks).

  8. Wired is king by Xenna · · Score: 2

    In my experience wifi is a bit too unreliable to run your IoT applications on. Wifi links can be unreliable and anyone could DDOS your IoT application from a (relatively) safe distance and it's a real bummer if you can't enter your house when you need to because the rfid reader/finger print scanner can't contact your door latch. Therefore (been there done that) I prefer a good wired ethernet solution. Personally I use the openpicus flyport ethernet for such applications. Small, cheap and rock solid. But I'd prefer a compact wired Arduino so I can run my state machine library on it.

    I guess competition is good, but the Arduino trademark stuff is a bit annoying.