I have a several boxes of embedded boards in front of me. There are ~100 boards total, from: NXP, Intel, Renesas, InnoPhase, RealTek, ON Semiconductor, Nordic, STMicroelectornics, Atmel, just to name a few. All but ~10 boards have an Arduino Header on them. The remaining 90% conform (roughly) to the standard Arduino header: Rx/Tx uart on pins 0/1, VIN, 5V, GNDx2, and 3.3V pins, and the rest GPIO. I can't find a good explanation as to how a tiny foundation started 16 years ago became the dominant interface of the embedded world. Does anyone know?
Ask HN: How did the Arduino Pin Header eat the world?
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Re: Ask HN: How did the Arduino Pin Header eat the world?
#2The Adafruit Feather form factor and the Raspberry Pi 40-pin header have a similar effect. In these cases it's because of an open specification and a rich market in IO boards.
Re: Ask HN: How did the Arduino Pin Header eat the world?
#3The Adafruit Feather form factor and the Raspberry Pi 40-pin header have a similar effect. In these cases it's because of an open specification and a rich market in IO boards.
It's odd because I've never seen an RPi header on anything but an RPi, but Arduino is ubiquitous. I find it hard to believe some scrappy maker enthusiasts in 2005 accidentally changed every vendor's form factor, especially considering they can't even agree on an IDE, and those came first. Seems like there must have been an consortium or a spec or an RFC that was agreed upon? Odd that arduino.cc doesn't mention it.
Re: Ask HN: How did the Arduino Pin Header eat the world?
#4The Adafruit Feather form factor and the Raspberry Pi 40-pin header have a similar effect. In these cases it's because of an open specification and a rich market in IO boards.
It's odd because I've never seen an RPi header on anything but an RPi, but Arduino is ubiquitous. I find it hard to believe some scrappy maker enthusiasts in 2005 accidentally changed every vendor's form factor, especially considering they can't even agree on an IDE, and those came first. Seems like there must have been an consortium or a spec or an RFC that was agreed upon? Odd that arduino.cc doesn't mention it.
Why not? Arduino became popular among DIY enthusiasts, a lot of cheap arduino shields were produced, so many other dev boards now have compatible pinout.