Ever since I got involved with Espressif's ESP32/ESP8266 chips, I haven't even thought about arduinos, except to download the UI, but you don't even need to do that with the right VSCode extensions to make your life better.
Last time I used Arduino was probably the late 2000s, as a kid/teenager,student their prices always felt too high to me, so I moved to "compatibles" or "clones" for a while.
Once ESP8266 and ESP32 came along (with a detour thanks to Raspberry Pi coming along in the 2010s), there was really no need nor desire to use Arduino anymore and like you I forget about them.
Maybe they have a place in education, and maybe in industrial applications, but outside of that, I wouldn't even consider Arduino anymore.
PlatformIO by the way is excellent, and I've used it for all ESP8266/ESP32 development in VSCode for some time now, though increasingly I just use ESPHome, as my desire to program microcontrollers at a low level wanes and my desire to simply achieve the task quickly grows.
I use a combination of Adafruit Ampy to copy files, esptool to reflash, picocom for the REPL, and VSCode. Some of those might be redundant and it did take a bit to figure out the syntax. But once that’s determined it’s cake, and all saved in my CLI history. I just Ctrl+R and bring it back.
The raspberry pico is much nicer to work with, if you're looking for an alternative. It has dual core if you need it, and the fun little IO coprocessors if you want to get really low level. The pico2 even has a risc-v mode
The process of getting a binary onto the board is just dragging a file, and on linux at least you can script it with picotool
+1, if only for the documentation. If you haven’t, skim through it: https://pip.raspberrypi.com/documents/RP-008373-DS-2-rp2350-... it’s truly unlike any reference manual I’ve ever read. I will happily pay a few extra cents at modest volumes for a chance to get the detailed technical details and opinions from the design team.
The flipside of this is that the RP2xxx has rather poor hard IP, and the PIO is not quite powerful enough to make up for it.
They are great for basic hobbyist projects, but they just can't compare to something like an STM32 for more complicated applications.
They are a pleasure to work with and I think that they are great MCUs, but every time I try to use them for nontrivial applications I end up being disappointed.
Can you give an example of a chip with software-defined IO coprocessors that is 1/4 the price? The pricing I’m getting on the RP2350 is 0.6EUR per chip.
When I’ve compared to other dual-core SoCs with programmable IO, like NXP with FlexIO (~€11) or ESP32 chips with RMT (~€1) they are much more expensive than the RP2350.. is there a selection of programmable IO chips I’m missing?
To "yes, and..." you, the whole RP2040 microcontroller line is great and I would encourage folks to support the smaller maker/OSHW companies on Tindie[1] who use it.
>It has dual core if you need it, and the fun little IO coprocessors
I think you're missing the point of what made arduino so popular. It's not the HW itself, it's that you can plug in whatever display, sensor or motor driver out there, and there's ready made templates in the IDE that gets you running immediately, without you having to know anything about how the HW or SW works under the hood.
The lack of dual cores or "fun IO coprocessor" whatever fun is in that context, was never an issue for the arduino.
There's a virtually unlimited number microcontrollers and boards out there for tinkering or production, that are more powerful and have more features, but they all have a higher technical barrier to entry than the standard Arduino out of the box.
I don't wanna have to read datasheets and erratas just to learn how to use a second core, deal with shared memory between cores, or how to configure the GPIO of the "fun IO coprocessor" just to get a LED blinking to work. That's not what fun is to a lot of people. Fun is getting the motor spinning until my coffee finishes brewing and that's where the Arduino ecosystem USP was versus other more powerful platforms.
> I don't wanna have to read datasheets and erratas
I recently started programming Arduino for profit and you need to do exactly that, because the libraries range from somewhat buggy to completely broken. They so often just write into random other registers and if it works it is only do to the chip already working without any configuration and the library not breaking things too badly.
The RP2xxx also comes with excellent documentation and libraries. If anything, with the drag-n-drop flashing it is even easier to work with than an Arduino.
> Are they more in number and easier to use than the Arduino libraries?
It's not either/or, beyond what's in the native SDK RP2 boards also benefit from the Arduino ecosystem via the excellent and well maintained https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico
This article doesn’t really explain how the new Arduino stuff works, which makes it harder to judge the impact of these new licenses. I’m used to flashing microcontroller boards over USB, originally from the Arduino IDE, more recently with PlatformIO. I’ve bought boards that have WiFi, but it wasn’t an essential part of the development environment.
I did a bit of searching and found some sketchy documentation that just leaves me with more questions. It sounds like Arduino’s new web editor programs boards wirelessly somehow? Does it assume the board has WiFi? What is this new, networked system? What Internet protocols does it use? How do you pair it with the web editor?
Adafruit is pretty clearly the front-runner these days in the educational/hobbyist market, Arduino (and even SparkFun) have fallen by the wayside. My only gripe is the focus on micropython these days, it can introduce a barrier later in the learning process when you eventually need to leave the nicely organized sandbox. They still support the “Arduino” C++ libraries, but uPy is the default.
I doubt Qualcomm will be able to pressure there rules to the market. They do not own the cpu and making a arduino like board is very easy nowerdays. The have not even the power over the bootloader or the compiler. Library’s are either standard c/c++ or open source. People also do not like the arduino ide because the days of easy setup and run are gone and a real way of debug is needed in most projects. China board makers will never obey any rules and marketplaces like alibaba will still sell clones. Perhaps the ai at Qualcomm told them to buy arduino because it is in a suicide mission. Please excuse my bad English, no native speaker
> People also do not like the arduino ide because the days of easy setup and run are gone and a real way of debug is needed in most projects.
A surprising amount of embedded SoCs target the Arduino IDE either as the main IDE, or one of the main ones. And for those the setup is still pretty easy for non technical users - "Download IDE, paste this into the boardmanager, compile the sketch, upload". That's the main reason I'm still using the Arduino IDE for stuff I publish and expect less technical people to use.
The problem with the IDE is that it doesn't offer a gradual path to more advanced usage. You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project. You can split off functionality into libraries, but the way library resolving works is way worse compared to "proper" build systems. There are projects to provide makefiles for Arduino projects, but it's a bit of a pain to set up - I use that for CI on some of my stuff, but it clearly is on the other end of difficulty scale.
And of course the editor is horrible - but thanks to file watching and automatic reloads that isn't much of an issue nowadasy.
But targeting the Arduino IDE only means to have a GCC version to compile and some upload program and then set a bunch of variables in platform.txt . It doesn't actually makes it any harder to not use the Arduino IDE.
> The problem with the IDE is that it doesn't offer a gradual path to more advanced usage. You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project. You can split off functionality into libraries, but the way library resolving works is way worse compared to "proper" build systems. There are projects to provide makefiles for Arduino projects, but it's a bit of a pain to set up - I use that for CI on some of my stuff, but it clearly is on the other end of difficulty scale.
It actually isn't all that hard. I recently did exactly that and it took like a week, most of which was spent on understanding what the Arduino IDE does with strace. Initially I assumed the Arduino IDE does way more stuff then it actually does. The makefile projects are too complicated, because they try to abstract over the installation and project. Instead I used Autotools which is way easier and simpler. It also breaks less, because these makefile projects tend to hardcode paths.
To save others the work: All you need to do is populate CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, ... with the information from platform.txt and boards.txt . Then tell your build system to use the cross-compiler toolchain from your OS. Take care to only use the exact uploader program version that the Arduino IDE also uses, I have been burned by using the latest version, which bricked my board (i.e. you can't upload anything to fix it and need to use a second board to reflash the bootloader). This information is in the package_index.json file. Granted this is annoying to work with using fulltext search, you would have a much saner experience actually using the JSON format, but it still works.
> You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project.
You can have multiple files just fine, this is actually the reason why the Arduino IDE defaults to having this project directory. The Arduino IDE just assumes all files below that are things to compile. You need to remember to not name the other files with *.ino, but *.cpp, *.c and *.h, otherwise you end up with multiple main functions. An *.ino file is just a *.cpp file that gets preprocessed with a main function template.
> And of course the editor is horrible
You can tell the Arduino IDE to use another editor, which is what I did when I used it.
So basically, Arduino IDE acts as the client side of the tether to compile and flash firmware to the target device.
This seems like an ideal component for the OSS community to handle and rally around. Then anyone can use the IDE of their choice, the compile-flash manager handles the rest.
Prototyping platforms have tiny markets, but lead to downstream sales. Many a company were brought down by more developer-friendly platforms ignoring the "tiny" userbase of people who want to do unconventional things.
Most IC vendors provide free samples and support because of this. That's a market size of close to zero -- electronic engineers -- but leads to a market size of "massive." I can get an application engineer to visit my office for free to help me develop if I want.
Arguably, iPhone and Android won by supporting the tiny market of developers, who went on to build an ecosystem of applications, some long-tail, and some unexpected successes.
And arguably, x86 won for the same reason.
Atmel had shipped 500 million AVR flash microcontrollers, due in large part to the ecosystem created by Arduino.
Balmer said "Developers! developers! developers!" Visual Studio was not a major revenue driver for Microsoft; what was developed in it was.
>Atmel had shipped 500 million AVR flash microcontrollers, due in large part to the ecosystem created by Arduino.
How do you know the 500 million sales is due to the Arduino ecosystem?
I used to work in embedded for 10+ years and in the 4 companies I worked at so far, none of the products ever featured AVR microcontrollers. The microcontroller of choice for production was always based on the feature/cost ratio for each application, never on the "is it part of the Arduino ecosystem?" question.
Tinkering with Arduino at home, and building products for mass production, have widely different considerations.
If they sold 500 million microcontrollers and your workplaces never bought any, then your experience doesn't tell us anything about why the people that did buy them, bought them.
Seems fine. There's a Qualcomm SaaS platform you don't need that they have the boilerplate no-hacking clause on. And Arduinos are the same as always. Considering the EFF and Arduino positions in favour, both of whom have done a lot for open-source stuff, I really can't be bothered that Adafruit is trying to drum up some marketing content.
My first Arduino was something like 15 years ago as well, a Duemilanove. I suspect my parents still have it. I'm not saying nothing can change over time, but there's always one controversy after another online these days in software communities and I think rather than trust the latest mob I'm going to trust the guy who's been serving me well for more than a decade. These openness purity tests are really not for me.
>there's always one controversy after another online these days in software communities and I think rather than trust the latest mob I'm going to trust the guy who's been serving me well for more than a decade. These openness purity tests are really not for me.
Thanks you! Sad that HN gets ideologically captured in the same mob behavior instead of thinking logically and practically.
>The logical thinking is: are they going to make me dependent on some cloud service to develop for Arduino?
The logic to me is "how can they do that?". You don't need a cloud service to program a microcontroller and they can't force that upon you even if they'd want to since the arduino board is not an iPhone.
Same story on this side and same feelings. It doesn't matter to the mob, the perception is all. Who cares that there's a website which is not open source, you don't buy an arduino for the website. You buy it because it's cheap and easy to use. Otherwise everyone would still be flashing atmel 8s
It's a bit odd that most of this article is various claims from one of Arduino's competitors being taken at face value, especially when the EFF spokesperson generally seems to think the new terms broadly make sense, albeit with some criticisms.
It sounds like Adafruit are just trying to sow some outrage here.
Historically neither of them made any microcontrollers. Arduino shipped Atmel and Raspberry Pi chips. Adafruit has boards with a variety of microcontrollers from various brands on them.
This is different now that Arduino is Qualcomm-owned and ships Qualcomm silicon, of course.
They also sell feather and a bunch of other vaguely similar stuff and have their own "maker" ecosystem (think CircuitPython). I like Adafruit, but they are in many senses competitors to Arduino.
I understand adafruit's take at it. But I guess they are simply plain wrong when saying 'incompatible', at least from a pure license perspective for the HW/firmware.
As other pointed out, companies like Google demonstrate, how open source can be used in a rather aggressive commercial strategy. However, I think the good news is that that the open hardware stuff is not rocket science and maintenance hell at this point (without the new Qualcomm bits). I guess it is now for others to step up and make the ecosystem resilient. That is IMHO the power of open source in case it works.
I never use Arduino or Arduino IDE anyway; it's incredibly laggy for me, and I hate having these things in the cloud. I mainly use Pico and VS Code now.
There is a version of Thonny[1] designed for use with the Pico that is great for education. Raspberry Pi have some good resources on getting started[2].
If your target audience is school kids, you really can't go past the micro:bit and Makecode[3].
That has been a long way coming. Only a couple of months ago I was looking at alternatives and "Arduino compatible" products. The reason being simply that so many "for fun projects" are built with it and I wondered what good alternatives there are.
I kind of drifted off. So curious about what people here think is the best "Arduino when it still was open source" contender. Preferably something Arduino compatible because of the sheer amount of projects already out there.
That said I've heard a fair bit about Adafruit criticism as well, but that's more on the company level and no personal experience there.
Hobbyists don’t get full exposure to this, but the reality is that the embedded space is still very much a binary blob landscape. Even relatively popular SDKs like Expressif and Nordic’s are full of weird proprietary stuff, and it just gets worse as you go into beefier hardware (Rockchip, I’m looking at you).
But yeah, Arduino is in a weird place right now. I knew people there (kind of lost track), quite liked their IDE and how accessible it made a lot of things, but the recent turn on events is just… weird.
As an aside, I have never seen a decent license for user generated content. Either they expose the platform to serious liability, or they come across as incredibly predatory.
In this context, the license is for using the Arduino Studio application. This is hosted by Arduino, and therefore needs to take user input, save it and work with it. As I understand it, this puts them in a complex situation: they don't own the code you've written (obviously), but they do need to do things with it like compile it and run it (when you press the button in the IDE). They're also hosting the code and therefore partly legally responsible for it.
At the very least, you need some sort of user agreement to specify the things you can do with their content, otherwise you can't really do it because it's their content and you're not allowed to mess with it by default. (Like you said, code is copyrighted by default.) You also need to specify the things that are necessary by law because you are hosting that code and therefore in part responsible for it. You also don't want to make the user sign a new agreement every other week if you add some new feature that they need to agree to use, because the cost of all those legal documents is prohibitive, and it's also very bad UX.
Added to this the fact that lawyers are naturally very conservative as a profession (generally only doing things that have been proven successful, rather than avoiding things that have been proven unsuccessful), and it's easy to see why these sorts of agreements tend to be more expansive than they perhaps need to be, in order to ensure the company is fully protected.
Is this actually true? Doesn't the action of directing someone to compile this code, mean they are allowed to compile this code? Of course they are not allowed to do anything else, but this is what I want as a user. I think it is more, that the vendors want to push the user to grant them more rights than what would be strictly necessary for them to do they job they "sell".
T&C's preventing reverse engineering of an online platform seems to have no real business value. Serious hackers will ignore the T&C's, whilst serious competitors will not need to do any reverse engineering to build an online compiler.
These days I don't think Arduinos are meaningfully more accessible than, say, an ESP8266 or ESP32. If I was starting a new hobby project today I'd choose the latter.
That's only if you're using the Arduino IDE though, and it's so commonplace that instructions are widespread. Many are using MicroPython/CircuitPython which are independent from Arduino.
The first esp8266 I bought was as a dedicated wifi chip for an arduino (or something) project. I discovered after getting it, that it came with a 'free' MCU (that was default flashed with a UART/AT-command firmware to allow other MCUs to get wifi)
There is a lot of shade being thrown against Adafruit in this discussion thread which is disappointing.
It is disappointing because it distracts from the discussion around Open Source and Arduino as a long term educational tool. Regardless if that shade is in good faith or not, it distracts from the conversation we should be having.
Is this another one of those opensource project gone wrong, that when they lose the user base because of this gray(blackish) i would say) “new terms” they apologise and try to come back… often too late?
>Adafruit’s Torrone had also said Arduino’s new documents “introduce an irrevocable, perpetual license over anything users upload.”
Yea that's gonna be a hard pass for me. Thank goodness for the Pi Pico which means I'll never have to use Arduino ever again. On a side note, the new Arduino IDE based on Monaco looked nice but made development so painful I just stopped. I had to keep disconnecting and reconnecting devices all the time to upload sketches when before with the old IDE that was never an issue. Everything Arduino feels like a regression.
After Qualcomm bought them? Who could have seen this coming? Hang on while I get back to arguing with my MSP that I really would prefer ProxMox over HyperV to replace VMWare.
I did some evaluating on this option and there's definitely complexity to bear in mind: Proxmox has worse support for my storage and backup solutions, and if the MSP you are working with has a ton of experience on Hyper-V migrations and limited Proxmox experience, the support you get will lack.
I will say I'd eventually love to have my day job environment on Proxmox but it isn't quite ready to be there today. No shade to anyone who is able to be there by any means, but I think it's fair to say hypervisors aren't something you want to choose on vibes alone.
So this citation, is basically fake news and FUD.
The *now* part is false and this hide the fact that the "platform" is only the SaaS.
> Phillip Torrone had warned [...] Arduino’s users were now “explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering or even attempting to understand how the platform works unless Arduino gives permission.”
I’ve never heard of this, and it feels like if true this is the type of thing that would be covered. Do you have any links to references that support this claim?
The doxxing listed here is saying a person's first name? I think? Maybe former name? This is hard to follow. It's so deep in arguing about arguing that I can't tell if he's a 1/10 problem or a 9/10 problem.
I probably missed some of the cross links but this is a mess.
Can you elaborate on "harassing trans people"? From these links at best I can guess at one of them being trans but I can't tell if that's related to the argument; who else is on that list?
This adds a little more context, but it still seems to be a complete nothingburger. It also looks like the user was harassing adafruit for not condemning the use of AI.
I do keep meaning to try this though - https://platformio.org/
Once ESP8266 and ESP32 came along (with a detour thanks to Raspberry Pi coming along in the 2010s), there was really no need nor desire to use Arduino anymore and like you I forget about them.
Maybe they have a place in education, and maybe in industrial applications, but outside of that, I wouldn't even consider Arduino anymore.
PlatformIO by the way is excellent, and I've used it for all ESP8266/ESP32 development in VSCode for some time now, though increasingly I just use ESPHome, as my desire to program microcontrollers at a low level wanes and my desire to simply achieve the task quickly grows.
The process of getting a binary onto the board is just dragging a file, and on linux at least you can script it with picotool
I'm asking because used Arduino ide to program STM32L011 and it would run for months or even years.
They are great for basic hobbyist projects, but they just can't compare to something like an STM32 for more complicated applications.
They are a pleasure to work with and I think that they are great MCUs, but every time I try to use them for nontrivial applications I end up being disappointed.
> nontrivial applications
Out of curiosity, where do you find that you’re hitting the limits of what it can handle?
There are similar chips at a quarter of the price.
Obviously for hobbyist stuff, $1 doesn't really matter.
When I’ve compared to other dual-core SoCs with programmable IO, like NXP with FlexIO (~€11) or ESP32 chips with RMT (~€1) they are much more expensive than the RP2350.. is there a selection of programmable IO chips I’m missing?
[1] https://www.tindie.com/search/?q=rp2040
Even easier if you setup debugging using another pico, debug probe or even a Pi (not sure if this works on the 5)
I think you're missing the point of what made arduino so popular. It's not the HW itself, it's that you can plug in whatever display, sensor or motor driver out there, and there's ready made templates in the IDE that gets you running immediately, without you having to know anything about how the HW or SW works under the hood.
The lack of dual cores or "fun IO coprocessor" whatever fun is in that context, was never an issue for the arduino.
There's a virtually unlimited number microcontrollers and boards out there for tinkering or production, that are more powerful and have more features, but they all have a higher technical barrier to entry than the standard Arduino out of the box.
I don't wanna have to read datasheets and erratas just to learn how to use a second core, deal with shared memory between cores, or how to configure the GPIO of the "fun IO coprocessor" just to get a LED blinking to work. That's not what fun is to a lot of people. Fun is getting the motor spinning until my coffee finishes brewing and that's where the Arduino ecosystem USP was versus other more powerful platforms.
I recently started programming Arduino for profit and you need to do exactly that, because the libraries range from somewhat buggy to completely broken. They so often just write into random other registers and if it works it is only do to the chip already working without any configuration and the library not breaking things too badly.
Are they more in number and easier to use than the Arduino libraries?
>If anything, with the drag-n-drop flashing it is even easier to work with than an Arduino.
Why do you think the Arduino is more difficult than "drag-n-drop flashing" by comparison? Do you think one click is more difficult?
It's not either/or, beyond what's in the native SDK RP2 boards also benefit from the Arduino ecosystem via the excellent and well maintained https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico
I did a bit of searching and found some sketchy documentation that just leaves me with more questions. It sounds like Arduino’s new web editor programs boards wirelessly somehow? Does it assume the board has WiFi? What is this new, networked system? What Internet protocols does it use? How do you pair it with the web editor?
It doesn't need to do anything with "the cloud".
A surprising amount of embedded SoCs target the Arduino IDE either as the main IDE, or one of the main ones. And for those the setup is still pretty easy for non technical users - "Download IDE, paste this into the boardmanager, compile the sketch, upload". That's the main reason I'm still using the Arduino IDE for stuff I publish and expect less technical people to use.
The problem with the IDE is that it doesn't offer a gradual path to more advanced usage. You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project. You can split off functionality into libraries, but the way library resolving works is way worse compared to "proper" build systems. There are projects to provide makefiles for Arduino projects, but it's a bit of a pain to set up - I use that for CI on some of my stuff, but it clearly is on the other end of difficulty scale.
And of course the editor is horrible - but thanks to file watching and automatic reloads that isn't much of an issue nowadasy.
> The problem with the IDE is that it doesn't offer a gradual path to more advanced usage. You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project. You can split off functionality into libraries, but the way library resolving works is way worse compared to "proper" build systems. There are projects to provide makefiles for Arduino projects, but it's a bit of a pain to set up - I use that for CI on some of my stuff, but it clearly is on the other end of difficulty scale.
It actually isn't all that hard. I recently did exactly that and it took like a week, most of which was spent on understanding what the Arduino IDE does with strace. Initially I assumed the Arduino IDE does way more stuff then it actually does. The makefile projects are too complicated, because they try to abstract over the installation and project. Instead I used Autotools which is way easier and simpler. It also breaks less, because these makefile projects tend to hardcode paths.
To save others the work: All you need to do is populate CPPFLAGS, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, ... with the information from platform.txt and boards.txt . Then tell your build system to use the cross-compiler toolchain from your OS. Take care to only use the exact uploader program version that the Arduino IDE also uses, I have been burned by using the latest version, which bricked my board (i.e. you can't upload anything to fix it and need to use a second board to reflash the bootloader). This information is in the package_index.json file. Granted this is annoying to work with using fulltext search, you would have a much saner experience actually using the JSON format, but it still works.
> You're pretty much stuck with a single file main project.
You can have multiple files just fine, this is actually the reason why the Arduino IDE defaults to having this project directory. The Arduino IDE just assumes all files below that are things to compile. You need to remember to not name the other files with *.ino, but *.cpp, *.c and *.h, otherwise you end up with multiple main functions. An *.ino file is just a *.cpp file that gets preprocessed with a main function template.
> And of course the editor is horrible
You can tell the Arduino IDE to use another editor, which is what I did when I used it.
This seems like an ideal component for the OSS community to handle and rally around. Then anyone can use the IDE of their choice, the compile-flash manager handles the rest.
Prototyping platforms have tiny markets, but lead to downstream sales. Many a company were brought down by more developer-friendly platforms ignoring the "tiny" userbase of people who want to do unconventional things.
Most IC vendors provide free samples and support because of this. That's a market size of close to zero -- electronic engineers -- but leads to a market size of "massive." I can get an application engineer to visit my office for free to help me develop if I want.
Arguably, iPhone and Android won by supporting the tiny market of developers, who went on to build an ecosystem of applications, some long-tail, and some unexpected successes.
And arguably, x86 won for the same reason.
Atmel had shipped 500 million AVR flash microcontrollers, due in large part to the ecosystem created by Arduino.
Balmer said "Developers! developers! developers!" Visual Studio was not a major revenue driver for Microsoft; what was developed in it was.
How do you know the 500 million sales is due to the Arduino ecosystem?
I used to work in embedded for 10+ years and in the 4 companies I worked at so far, none of the products ever featured AVR microcontrollers. The microcontroller of choice for production was always based on the feature/cost ratio for each application, never on the "is it part of the Arduino ecosystem?" question.
Tinkering with Arduino at home, and building products for mass production, have widely different considerations.
Thanks you! Sad that HN gets ideologically captured in the same mob behavior instead of thinking logically and practically.
Don't know what Adafruit has a problem with, but the above is my problem.
The logic to me is "how can they do that?". You don't need a cloud service to program a microcontroller and they can't force that upon you even if they'd want to since the arduino board is not an iPhone.
Now contemplate open Android and Google Play Services.
Or even that they forbid to use different clients for YouTube
It sounds like Adafruit are just trying to sow some outrage here.
> Chief microcontroller rival Adafruit
Implying that Adafruit makes their own competing microcontrollers, which sure would have been news to me.
Edit: sees sibling posted at the same time. Well that would explain it.
This is different now that Arduino is Qualcomm-owned and ships Qualcomm silicon, of course.
As other pointed out, companies like Google demonstrate, how open source can be used in a rather aggressive commercial strategy. However, I think the good news is that that the open hardware stuff is not rocket science and maintenance hell at this point (without the new Qualcomm bits). I guess it is now for others to step up and make the ecosystem resilient. That is IMHO the power of open source in case it works.
They are PCB brands. The microcontrollers are made by the usual manufacturers like ST, Renesas, Infineon...
But of course Arduino historically also didn't make the Atmel or Pico chips, so I can sort of see what they were going for.
If your target audience is school kids, you really can't go past the micro:bit and Makecode[3].
1. https://thonny.org
2. https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/getting-started...
3. https://makecode.microbit.org
I kind of drifted off. So curious about what people here think is the best "Arduino when it still was open source" contender. Preferably something Arduino compatible because of the sheer amount of projects already out there.
That said I've heard a fair bit about Adafruit criticism as well, but that's more on the company level and no personal experience there.
But yeah, Arduino is in a weird place right now. I knew people there (kind of lost track), quite liked their IDE and how accessible it made a lot of things, but the recent turn on events is just… weird.
Everything else is top notch open.
But for low power sensor stuff the ESP32 is far away from being my favorite anyway. That's almost all-in Nordic for me.
Code is copyright without any licensing. The hardware is not licensed, I don't sign a license or agree to one when buying a car or microwave.
You can find edge cases, but the point is no licensing is actually required.
At the very least, you need some sort of user agreement to specify the things you can do with their content, otherwise you can't really do it because it's their content and you're not allowed to mess with it by default. (Like you said, code is copyrighted by default.) You also need to specify the things that are necessary by law because you are hosting that code and therefore in part responsible for it. You also don't want to make the user sign a new agreement every other week if you add some new feature that they need to agree to use, because the cost of all those legal documents is prohibitive, and it's also very bad UX.
Added to this the fact that lawyers are naturally very conservative as a profession (generally only doing things that have been proven successful, rather than avoiding things that have been proven unsuccessful), and it's easy to see why these sorts of agreements tend to be more expansive than they perhaps need to be, in order to ensure the company is fully protected.
T&C's preventing reverse engineering of an online platform seems to have no real business value. Serious hackers will ignore the T&C's, whilst serious competitors will not need to do any reverse engineering to build an online compiler.
Maybe it should all have been free software all the time.
(Disclosure: I know the Adafruit founder, but haven't discussed this matter with her.)
Why do you think it isn't?
It is disappointing because it distracts from the discussion around Open Source and Arduino as a long term educational tool. Regardless if that shade is in good faith or not, it distracts from the conversation we should be having.
Yea that's gonna be a hard pass for me. Thank goodness for the Pi Pico which means I'll never have to use Arduino ever again. On a side note, the new Arduino IDE based on Monaco looked nice but made development so painful I just stopped. I had to keep disconnecting and reconnecting devices all the time to upload sketches when before with the old IDE that was never an issue. Everything Arduino feels like a regression.
I will say I'd eventually love to have my day job environment on Proxmox but it isn't quite ready to be there today. No shade to anyone who is able to be there by any means, but I think it's fair to say hypervisors aren't something you want to choose on vibes alone.
Running a proprietary SaaS doesn't really show commitment to open source.
And btw, the "reverse engineering" close was already here too. You can check the archive.org of Jan 2025, months before the Qualcomm acquisition.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250120145427/https://www.ardui...
So this citation, is basically fake news and FUD. The *now* part is false and this hide the fact that the "platform" is only the SaaS.
> Phillip Torrone had warned [...] Arduino’s users were now “explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering or even attempting to understand how the platform works unless Arduino gives permission.”
They released their first closed source "pro" boards in 2021
https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/07/12/when-open-becomes-opaqu...
Unfortunately, it’s not isolated.
https://chaos.social/@North/115605819126197877
I probably missed some of the cross links but this is a mess.
Can you elaborate on "harassing trans people"? From these links at best I can guess at one of them being trans but I can't tell if that's related to the argument; who else is on that list?
This adds a little more context, but it still seems to be a complete nothingburger. It also looks like the user was harassing adafruit for not condemning the use of AI.
https://digipres.club/@discatte/115601133682447929
Conform conform conform.