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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

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Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#361

Post by MountDoom »

EasyMark wrote: post #347

Are they buying it up to kill it or phase it out? Seems like corporations never do anything like this to the "good" of the community, it's always bad. I'd love to be pointed at exceptions where a megacorp bought some small relatively benevolent project and then didn't squeeze all the profit out of it and leave it for dead.

I don't think it's malicious, it's just that Qualcomm offered a big payday to people who have been working on the project for a very long time and are probably on the verge of wanting to go something else in their life. And then they're gonna force them to navigate the Kafkaesque bureaucracy at BigCo to get an approval for every blog post, conference talk, etc. Expense reports, headcount planning, performance management, you name it. After a year or two, they're gonna be thoroughly cooked and leave.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#362

Post by rossdavidh »

EasyMark wrote: post #347

Are they buying it up to kill it or phase it out? Seems like corporations never do anything like this to the "good" of the community, it's always bad. I'd love to be pointed at exceptions where a megacorp bought some small relatively benevolent project and then didn't squeeze all the profit out of it and leave it for dead.

Google bought Android, but did not kill it. Same with YouTube. But, I admit, there are a lot more examples of the other way...

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#363

Post by rebolek »

quitit wrote: post #274
xphos wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the AI bit is overblown. Why does every large company have to do everything in technology, AI is horribly over valued in the market right now. The other issues are much more important as those are threats to Qcom's current profit method mostly MediaTek squeezing the lower tier market. It's unclear if Qcoms going to be able to dominate upper tier where they own like 60% of market share if they don't also compe…

The honest answer is that they see AI interaction as being the next human to computer interface, one that will function much in the way that super-apps do today, with the benefit of accelerating the purchasing pathway. In a way this mirrors how people opt for using apps even though a web version exists, because the apps are generally more performant. I'd argue that ChatGPT is already there. The instant check out feat…

What a nightmare!

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#364

Post by petre »

ACCount37 wrote: post #282
geerlingguy wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it with a grain of salt, but the rep I've been in contact with said they'd be releasing more on the SoC...

Here's hoping. Qualcomm hardware would be fun to play with if it wasn't attached to, you know. The rest of Qualcomm.

And NDAs, licenses. The world has pretty much moved on to ESP32, RPi Pico and other boards post pandemic.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#365

Post by andoando »

numpad0 wrote: post #307
andoando wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite remember, but I don't think I installed anything extra for ESP32. But PlatformIo with VSCode has it and was extremely easy to setup.

You must have done File -> Preferences... -> Additional board manager URL -> OK, and clicked Tools -> Board -> Board manager... -> esp32 by Espressif Systems -> Install. And that's like, I think installing VSCode itself can be more scary, so...

Yup, youre right I remember that

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#366

Post by andoando »

j45 wrote: post #310
andoando wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hard about programming an ESP32? I plug the USB in and its the same as an Arudino, can even use Arduino IDE, but I prefer VS Code with the PlatformIo extension. You can even use the Arduino Library (#import And a ESP32C board with wifi/bluetooth is like $8 https://www.amazon.com/Seeed-Studio-XIAO-ESP32C3-Microcontro... (and thats from amazon, on alibaba its like couple bucks if that) As a side note, you can po…

It's not about whether it's hard for you. Lots of people don't program. More people don't know how to program than do know how to program. In that way, just because I can't imagine it being hard, doesn't mean I understand everything there is to understand. This creates a gap and opportunity for products to make technology more approachable for the majority, instead of the minority (programmers). Making things accessi…

But there really is no difference in difficulty in setting it up?

Besides I don't get this argument considering you're setting up an arduino/esp32 to program/learn to program a microcontroller...

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#367

Post by kenmacd »

isodev wrote: post #227
geerlingguy wrote: post #3

Additionally, they're launching their first joint product, the $44 Uno Q SBC, which has a Dragonwing SoC and STM32 microcontroller on an Uno form factor board[1]. It seems like Arduino will keep their brand, maintain their existing product lines, and continue building devices using other vendor's chips (besides Qualcomm), etc... but as with all acquisitions—I wonder how long that state of affairs will last. Alternati…

There is also the change of location here. In normal times, it wouldn’t matter where in the world a company is based but moving “entirely to the US” is just not a good look these days.

It is rather unfortunate. I haven't seen them mention moving manufacturing or their 'Arduino offices' (have you?), but even still I'd rather not support a country threatening to annex my homeland.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#368

Post by bluescrn »

MountDoom wrote: post #200

The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts. Every time a big player gets involved, they think they can change this. A decade ago, Intel tried that back in the day with Galileo / Edison, and tellingly, they came up with the same "ideas": IoT / AI. If you're doing cheap IoT trinkets, you're never going to pay extra for a brand. You're going to buy th…

> The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts.

With Arduino, the hardware is probably the least interesting/important part. The software side is more important, providing an easy-to-use IDE and a simplified API and platform abstraction layer to make it super-easy to get started. Then there's the documentation, sample code, and community.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#369

Post by DamonHD »

michaelt wrote: post #352
MountDoom wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? You can have the same chip for much less. The "toolchain" is just a bit of syntactic sugar around existing languages and tools, but more to the point, nothing stops you from using it with your own hardware. I'm not doubting you, just sincerely curious.

If they've done 500k units, "based on a respun Uno" almost certainly means "there's a atmega328p on the PCB, a 16MHz crystal, and some points granting access to the serial and reset pins"

ATMega328p, 32768Hz xtal, in a smart radiator valve. See OpenTRV (for the open part of the s/w and h/w) and Radbot for the commercial product.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#370

Post by lovehashbrowns »

nunobrito wrote: post #177
andoando wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hard about programming an ESP32? I plug the USB in and its the same as an Arudino, can even use Arduino IDE, but I prefer VS Code with the PlatformIo extension. You can even use the Arduino Library (#import And a ESP32C board with wifi/bluetooth is like $8 https://www.amazon.com/Seeed-Studio-XIAO-ESP32C3-Microcontro... (and thats from amazon, on alibaba its like couple bucks if that) As a side note, you can po…

It is basically the same thing, don't understand either why it would harder. The only thing is to add the ESP32 module on the addons since it doesn't come enabled by default. Arduino isn't good for projects with more than 5 source code files, it is an awful IDE beyond the basic things you can pack on a single source code file. Always had so many difficulties handling the IDE defects, basically it can crash when start…

As a complete beginner to hardware stuff, I do find the Arduino Cloud thing to be pretty compelling. Being able to push out updates over the cloud is nice! Buuuut.. once I'm mostly done with a project, there's just no need at all for it anymore. The Arduino I'm using for a receipt printer is just sitting there and now the cloud bit doesn't do anything for me.

And the problem I have is that ESP32s aren't much more difficult to set up nowadays, are wildly cheaper, and I'm soso excited to start messing around with ESP-NOW which I don't think Arduino has? But having like 10 ESP32s for messing around freely is more valuable than the cloud thing for me. And there are some super fun projects for ESP32 also like the Cheap Yellow Display thing. I ordered what I thought was one display, except it was 3, and I thought I would have to provide my own ESP32s but nope, they come with them. And these three CYDs were cheaper than a single Arduino it's actually crazy.

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