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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

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Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#481

Post by conductr »

phoehne wrote: post #55
chpatrick wrote: post #29

ESP stuff is so damn cheap and capable now I'm not sure what you would use Arduino for these days.

Don't look at just the specs. You also need to look at the board design and programming environment. I've used the ESP32 native tools and they are a lot more complex than Arduino. But I'm an embedded firmware developer, so it's kind of what I expect. But I used an Arduino, with 5V tolerant outputs, to light up Halloween costumes for years. I do it in 1 page of code that's I write in their IDE. I don't have to set up…

I use arduino ide to build esp projects. I have not found it much different than the arduino as a beginner, except much cheaper and faster. I like not having to do all the shield stuff. But will admit, it was helpful to start on arduino as its built in pins helped me get going as I tried to avoid soldering and breadboarded everything. That only lasted a short time before I realized I had to solder some things if I wanted to grow the project. I still like the idea of breakout boards for specific things but I usually solder them in now.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#482

Post by friendzis »

guerrilla wrote: post #474
pclmulqdq wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are making so much of this when it seems so much simpler. Qualcomm likes buying high-margin businesses, and Arduino is a high-margin business. Gross margin on their boards is over 90% (hence why you can buy a Chinese clone of a $30 board for $3) and this trend shows no signs of slowing down. The TI equivalent of the $30 Arduino Uno is $5, and it's a true gateway product.

What's the TI equivalent?

Various launchpads, on the very low end MSP430

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#483

Post by RealityVoid »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #466
RealityVoid wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A competent engineer designing a devkit as simple as an arduino needs about 1 day of work. Hah! I like to underestimate scope as well, but this is really something else. Definitely a competent engineer could make something like this. But a couple of months maybe. You won't even read the documentation for the chip in a day.

Have you seen the schematics for these boards? They are exceptionally simple. Many devkits are much more complicated. I have actually done embedded engineering in the past and I was being generous with "a day." Skimming a datasheet is a skill and it certainly will not take a day to get the information you need off of it.

If you mean the HW alone... Still over a day. If you mean the software to go along it, a couple orders of magnitude more.

Even the simplest peripherals can bite back if you are not careful and you don't test the edge cases. AVR's are indeed quite simple, but if you try to build stuff other people will use, things need to be polished.

I actually do embedded engineering. I'm doing it right now! More on the SW side than the PCB design side, and, again, this is quite an exaggeration from your side, saying you could do it in a day.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#484

Post by werdl »

Interesting, but I do wonder if Arduino is close to the peak of its market share. Basically every hobbyist already knows about them - opportunities for growth would seem limited. Still exciting though!

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#485

Post by etiennebausson »

noobermin wrote: post #480
sneak wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unlikely that Qualcomm purchased them for their revenue or margins, which to Qualcomm’s scale are basically irrelevant.

So it sounds like again, this purchase makes no sense from anyone's perspective unless arduino are suckers.

They bought a brand with a positive reputation. That's it, volumes are irrelevant here.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#487

Post by thot_experiment »

Is arduino even relevant at all in 2025? I mean i gotta hand it to em they're getting an insane amount of life out of marketing a 20 year old chip but I haven't seriously considered using one for a decade or so because of how much better in literally every way the esp32 is. I mean it's like $10 for three of them, they're dual core, have a radio on board and you can even use the arduino IDE for em, what's the downside? I especially love the two cores because I can have a web stack and bluetooth on one core, and whatever realtime actual programming i need to do on the second core.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#488

Post by shermantanktop »

RealityVoid wrote: post #483
pclmulqdq wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the schematics for these boards? They are exceptionally simple. Many devkits are much more complicated. I have actually done embedded engineering in the past and I was being generous with "a day." Skimming a datasheet is a skill and it certainly will not take a day to get the information you need off of it.

If you mean the HW alone... Still over a day. If you mean the software to go along it, a couple orders of magnitude more. Even the simplest peripherals can bite back if you are not careful and you don't test the edge cases. AVR's are indeed quite simple, but if you try to build stuff other people will use, things need to be polished. I actually do embedded engineering. I'm doing it right now! More on the SW side than…

The estimate isn’t right, but the direction is right— there just aren’t that many discrete components on these boards. The chips themselves contain capabilities that an embedded designer would otherwise need to design. I’m not sure there’s much further to go, since much of what isn’t on the chipset is power related.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#489

Post by antirez »

wrigby wrote: post #453
antirez wrote: post #173

I'm not sure how it is possible to compete against the RP2040/RP2050 at this point: quality, great programming environment, awesome hardware specs, cheap.

Yeah, I just did a project at work with an RP2040 and was really impressed with the Pico SDK. It hits a sweet spot in between ST’s insanity and Arduino’s easy-but-not-powerful tradeoff. No crazy code generation, going from 0 to blinky is quick, but also going from blinky to DMA’s and interrupts is also a breeze. I will say that I think the hardware peripherals in STM32’s are miles ahead, and PIO’s don’t necessarily m…

Yep the STM32 has certain advantages, even if they are usually complicated to program. With the Flipper Zero I programmed a low level timer interrupt and had to setup don't know how many registers... And the documentation is lacking. Also I love the fact that the STM32 comes in 5v variants that are great to interface it directly with things like a Commodore 64 or a Spectrum.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#490

Post by pbandhoney »

Any article that uses 'empower' is automatically in my books bullshit and bad for downstream receivers of the news. This uses it Five times. I can see their strategy; data-center with VMware and now Arduino on the edge, but in the first case unless you have massive budget you're leaving ASAP, and really many Arduino users are precisely in that bracket, so they are 'already left'. Platform.io maybe? What are other OSS alternatives?
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