I am not a Maker and am not sure what, if any impact this may have on people who are but apparently Qualcom has “acquired” Arduino and it seems like the walls are rapidly going up.
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Wow! Well that’s nasty. And that ends my Arduino days. I’m more in the SAMD camp now though anyway. And it might not affect end users who just buy Arduino boards unless they use dev tools supplied by Arduino/Qualcom.
Anybody here remember the old James Caan movie Rollerball? We seem to be moving to dystopia as more companies just go full on mine everything for every penny.
Buh-bye Arduino.
Yeah, sad if they are going in a closed direction. As I stated, I am not a Maker and I guess people are more into R-Pi and ESP these days. Hopefully this is not a trend that will make them targets. Makes me wonder about STEM learning and classes.
STEM and education and reaching low tech populations are why the R-Pi came into being but it’s a lot more capable than Arduino. Raspberry Pi’s are full-on computers that can do much more complex stuff with a full OS and even graphical desktop display if desired.
Arduinos (at least the ones I’m familiar with) are more single-minded microcontrollers with fairly basic capabilities running Atmel chips. The SAMD stuff has lots more capabilities built-in (at least the ones I’m familiar with) and run faster than Arduinos but I’m not familiar enough with the latest of either to do a good comparison.
Are not Arduinos essentially development boards for Microchip microcontrollers?
Microchip development board
Arduino
Both use microcontrollers made by Microchip Technologies, which is also known as Atmel.
I think they are a base for many things. There seems to be a lot of projects on MakerWorld that use them or are related.
And our “friend” AI says (although open-source is not a given in the future):
AI Overview
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform consisting of a programmable circuit board and a simplified software environment used for building digital devices. It is used because it provides an accessible way for beginners and hobbyists to create interactive projects that can sense and control the physical world, with applications ranging from robots and smart home devices to educational tools.
Edit: so I would say yes to the development board.
IMO, if Qualcomm is finally making their chips available to the Maker World, as in new ‘Arduino Q’ boards, that’s a really good thing. They have some powerful processors and great wireless technologies. To me, current Arduino ‘value’ is in the open IDE - I rarely, as in never, use Arduino mfr’d boards. Since there is SOOOOO much developed in the form of libraries with Open Source license agreements, that can’t change. New stuff, sure, but existing ‘donated’ code has to be open.
It’s good to hear a different take on this. Is it possible the chips instruction sets could be “updated” so that older code no longer functions?
EDIT: Granted, that might equate to a self-inflicted foot injury via high velocity projectile, but history does repeat itself.
Not possible. Each library is rebuilt (recompiled) with a chip mfr’s (MicroChip to make a random example) toolset and incorporated into the IDE. Of course, Qualcomm could stop supporting the IDE, but that would clearly be a case of shooting one’s own foot.
Arduino LLC has long since lost the “Maker/Hobbyist” community which it once fostered, nurtured and grew. There are now a plethora of “Arduino Compatible” boards as well as alternative IDE’s available and programming languages. The community as a whole has moved well past and are not reliant on “Arduino LLC”.
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It will be ineresting to see where it all goes and what Qualcom is up to. They did just acquire the Israeli firm Autotalks (in October) which triggered problems with China regulators (Q supplies smartphone chips to Xiaomi) and caused a 4% fall in Q’s shares.