21–30 of 74 posts
Their real innovation was social. They built a community around the thing and provided documentation that wasn't addressed to EEs.
I'm so glad they didn't choose the PIC.
It's really just an Atmel AVR CPU, which you could buy on a development board before Arduino. Atmel has a tool chain for AVR CPUs, which is a version of GCC, so it's open source.[1] I've developed for such boards without any "Arduino" stuff. The Arduino project put a simplified IDE on the front of that. Their real innovation was social. They built a community around the thing and provided documentation that wasn't ad…
Disclaimer: I'm a long time PIC user, going all the way back to the PIC16C84. Long before anything like Arduino came out, I always found Microchip's documentation to be much easier to crack. Of course, I admit to a certain amount of mental inertia and familiarity with the platform as well.
Not to belittle the contributions of Hernando, he did great work. But so often each incremental step in technology is made with the help and inspiration from those who came before. It is the very nature of open source that it will be embraced and expanded.
Anyway, I was gratified to see now, that something I worked on 18 years ago would intersect with a such an interesting story, even if only in a tangential way.
The whole Arduino thing has always baffled me a bit. I've been programming 8-bit AVR chips since 2000. There have always been many different development board options. Even long before Wiring and Arduino. Sure many were more expensive but neither Wiring nor Arduino added much technically to the hardware itself. The real innovation of Arduino has always been the Wiring programming system. Personally I prefer the low-l…
It is always interesting to read genesis stories. I was especially surprised as I was reading this story to discover that the first prototype was built using the Javelin Stamp which I created. It is particularly ironic given that the rise in popularity of the Arduino was probably a contributing factor to the waning of interest in the Javelin Stamp. Not to belittle the contributions of Hernando, he did great work. But…
He has always gone by the quote: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" (from Isaac Newton). He fully recognizes that none of the work he did would be possible without the amazing work done by people before him.
So, all I have to say is: Thank you! Without people like you, the state of electronics and education in technology wouldn't be where it is today.
BTW, the Javelin Stamp, and it's predecessors, were all incredible feats of engineering and science. As well as the Propeller!
The whole Arduino thing has always baffled me a bit. I've been programming 8-bit AVR chips since 2000. There have always been many different development board options. Even long before Wiring and Arduino. Sure many were more expensive but neither Wiring nor Arduino added much technically to the hardware itself. The real innovation of Arduino has always been the Wiring programming system. Personally I prefer the low-l…
Embedded systems engineers are very intentionally not the audience for Arduino. With Arduino you can go from zero EE/FW experience to blinky LEDs in an evening. This is a powerful tool for opening up hardware hacking to young people, artists, designers, and other non-technical professions. Very few of these people are going to read through a datasheet or figure out the difference between DDRB and PORTB.
One of the saddest thing I read in a long time. Damn me.
Have you read the Autodesk File [1]? By a founder and the co-creator of the famous software. I've heard it can't be hosted in the US for legal reasons. [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html
The idea that the mere fact that Banzi was my thesis advisor gives him some sort of higher claim to the work done on Wiring, is, to say the least, frustrating to read. i dated an interior design student when at university there was a competition and my so was given second place my so was crushed and honestly thaer entry was far superior.. the ideas were more interesting and applied, and the effort was more pronounced…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you read the Autodesk File [1]? By a founder and the co-creator of the famous software. I've heard it can't be hosted in the US for legal reasons. [1] https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html
Only half but I mirrored the whole domain because I want to read it all.
How-to become a douchbag in 10 steps: 1. Be the supervisor for a thesis that will become a open-sourced project 2. Use this open sourced project in one of the classes you teach at University 3. work together with and ask for help from the creator of the open-sourced project 4. see the value of the open-sourced project 5. fork it 6. claim it as yours 7. get rich by selling it 8. write super douchy email to a previous…
This is part of the reason I just buy the cheapest Arduino-compatible clones possible and laugh at the idea that we should all buy genuine Arduino to support the people who put in the hard work - it's been fairly obvious for a long time that it was a Wiring rip-off through and through. Probably also why the official Arduino ports to non-AVR architectures are so incompetent compared to third-party ones; the AVR port w…