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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

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Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#531

Post by saidinesh5 »

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…

Do you happen to know how good the Linux environment is on the Dragonwing SoC.

I think their slides say Debian, but didn't mention what binary blobs one needs to have for enabling various functionality the SoC provides / how much their kernel deviates from mainline kernel ...

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#532

Post by relaxing »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #377
cosmicgadget wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$13-17 plus tax. Closer to two than three, especially by TPIR rules. The $7 burrito era is long gone unless it's a frozen burrito or someplace that is extremely sus.

Taco Bell lists their burrito supreme as $5.59.

> someplace that is extremely sus

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#533

Post by creshal »

nunobrito wrote: post #315
creshal wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code has enough momentum by now that Microsoft couldn't kill it even if it wanted to. And a lot of the arduino-side work would involve creating/tweaking LSPs to their ideosyncrasies and making IDE-agnostic compilers... all of which is IDE agnostic and makes Arduino more useful to all users. And, worst case, they could take it all to IntelliJ or other IDE vendors and quickly spin out an Arduino-branded IDE that isn…

I'm a java developer coming from a world where the IDE is tightly integrated with the language. For me, VS code always felt like a "jack of all trades and master of none". C/C++ are strongly typed languages, they aren't different from Java in that regard and yet it is so time consuming to navigate code, see if the syntax is correct and so forth. Really annoying to only know if the code is compiling correctly after pr…

Okay, that's cool for Java, but have you ever tried the absolute crap pyramid that is arduino's IDE? 2005 Eclipse would be a vast improvement in comparison. And Qualcomm never cares about anything that doesn't directly increase pforit margin, so "more money for better IDEs" with qualcomm in charge is just delusional.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#535

Post by IshKebab »

mrheosuper wrote: post #444
IshKebab wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Mbed was just as easy for hobbyists but had a far better designed API that could support professional work as well. Arduino is just badly designed. Unfortunately the Mbed guys stuck to their crap web-based IDE for waaaay too long, and when they finally realised it couldn't cut it, they pivoted to Yotto, which was a terrible Python based build too. When that failed they finally made Mbed Studio which was based on…

I really think what killed Mbed is the C++. I don't want to poison my codebase with the C++ stuff(and now you have to write wrapper for C++ if you want to use them inside your C codebase).

You know Arduino is C++?

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#536

Post by ezconnect »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #386
jajuuka wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Qualcomm bought them to destroy them. I think they see Arduino as a gateway. Instead of hoping students will learn ARM it's more reasonable to leverage Arduino's simple nature to act as an on-ramp for more low level developers. I wouldn't be surprised if Arduino IDE saw a revamp to better support jumping the gap between the Arduino to Snapdragon. ST and TI do the same thing with their boards too and it'…

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.

It's probably simpler, Arduino knows the market has no future and wanted to get out and did a sales pitch to Qualcomm and Qualcomm accepted.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#537

Post by neltnerb »

Arch-TK wrote: post #526
JKCalhoun wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long live Teensy [1]! I just wanted that someone mentioned these Arduino-likes in the comments. I suspect many of you have come across them though. [1] https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/

The teensy is so weird though. At least back when I played with them. They put a secondary chip which let's you flash over USB but they cover the debug pins and the only way to get serial over the USB port is to have a whole USB stack as part of your application. As a development board I would rather go with one of those STM32 backed boards and a knock off STLink, you need the STLink to flash, if you want DFU you can…

Could you clarify what you mean about getting serial over the USB port in the context of debug pins?

I've been using Teensy devices for over a decade and have always had it just recognize the device as if it were a USB to serial adapter and I can talk to it as what I'd call "serial over the USB port". But that obviously doesn't involve what I think software people usually mean when they're talking about firmware debug -- which usually entails stepping through execution, right?

I'm used to just printing debug statements to the Serial.println() function, I learned on the 8051 where the best bet was to toggle different pins when code lines are passed, so even Serial.println() was a huge step up.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#538

Post by tredre3 »

serbuvlad wrote: post #512
mietek wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because most of the free software ecosystem relies on unpaid volunteer work does not mean it is a desirable state of affairs, especially with billion dollar companies building on top of said work while hardly contributing anything back.

While that is true, if Espressif and the Raspberry Pi Foundation can build their SDKs and still offer cheap chips/boards, so could Arduino. I'm not expecting a $0 markup, but Arduino prices are simply unreasonable for what they offer, especially if you live in a lower income country.

Both Espressif and Raspberry pi (pico) target OEMs who will buy millions of their chips. They've both embraced the hobbyist market as well, but it's not how they've recouped their investment.

Arduino targets the hobyist market where customers will buy one (or at best a handful) of their boards. Arduino simply has no other way of recouping their investment than selling expensive hardware.

So I don't think it's fair to say that Arduino is being greedy. Also FWIW, Espressif's official dev boards are also pretty expensive. Not Arduino expensive, but several times the price of identical "clones" based on the same reference design and using the same official esp32 module.

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#539

Post by tredre3 »

freeopinion wrote: post #408
jajuuka wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Qualcomm bought them to destroy them. I think they see Arduino as a gateway. Instead of hoping students will learn ARM it's more reasonable to leverage Arduino's simple nature to act as an on-ramp for more low level developers. I wouldn't be surprised if Arduino IDE saw a revamp to better support jumping the gap between the Arduino to Snapdragon. ST and TI do the same thing with their boards too and it'…

Some years back when bluepills ran $2, Arduinos seemed to have no point. Today, you can buy an ESP32 dev board with wifi for $6. Or an Arduino Uno Wifi for $55.

> Some years back when bluepills ran $2, Arduinos seemed to have no point.

But you still used the Arduino SDK with the bluepill, so clearly Arduino had a point. Unless you were one of the few masochist who dealt with the STM32 toolchain directly for fun?

The Pi Pico is such a breath of fresh air in that regard. Finally a decent-enough toolchain for a decent-enough performing ARM MCU!

Re: Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

#540

Post by serbuvlad »

freeopinion wrote: post #522
serbuvlad wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is true, if Espressif and the Raspberry Pi Foundation can build their SDKs and still offer cheap chips/boards, so could Arduino. I'm not expecting a $0 markup, but Arduino prices are simply unreasonable for what they offer, especially if you live in a lower income country.

If you think the price is unreasonable, don't buy. You have listed what you seem to think are better options. I agree that there are better options. If somebody else wants to spend their money in different ways than I do, let them. If Arduino thinks they can make money this way, let them try. If it works, good for them, I guess. If it fails, I guess the joke will be on Qualcomm. Honestly, Arduino could slash their pr…

I have never bought an Arduino. I have bought a few Picos, a few ESP32s, and a couple Picos. And a clone of an Arduino Nano integrated in a system with a Pico for 5V logic, specifically, to implement a PS/2 controller. I don't see any advantage an Arduino has over an ESP32, aside from 5V logic support.
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