Talk:Arduino

early discussion

Images are needed for this article...

• Done. I have chosen a good looking one, but can't really decide, which fits the article best, so maybe someone want to change this,.. --DustyDingo 17:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

How is "Arduino" pronounced?

• It's pronounced italian. The 'r' is hardly pronounced. --DustyDingo 17:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
• Ar-du-i-no like english "are-do-ee-no" (you are, to do, ee like in bee, yes / no). -- Anonymous.

• The Creative Commons license used for the hardware designs is a non-commercial license, hence not Open Source in any relevant meaning of the word (for instance, the one in the Open Source Hardware article. -- Anonymous.

• • Actually, they're (now) under a CC-SA license, without the non-commercial clause, and the software is all GPL or LGPL. DMellis 21:59, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Sept 20 2007: I added links for the Barebones and Runtime versions. I hope that doing so is not link spam; these boards are significant offshoots of the Arudino project. They are derivatives of the Arduino's open-source design and represent a part of the project worth mentioning with a link. It's all so confusing huh? --DJ

when was the Arduino first published? or developed?

Prices

The article needs prices. And we need another article, to hold good comparison tables of all the current easily-user-programmable stand-alone device/development-platforms. -69.87.200.77 15:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

As one of the creators of Arduino, I think I'm supposed to suggest changes to the article rather than making them myself, so here goes. Firstly, there is no "Arduino foundation" and no currently registered trademarks (although we have begun to put "TM" on the boards and consider it a trademark of the group). It might be simpler and more correct to simply say "The Arduino hardware is manufactured by Smart Projects, an Italian company."

We do release schematics to all of the hardware (including those for which the production files are not available). Not all manufacturers do this, and we think it's an important part of letting people what the hardware is made of and how it works. Can the fact that these schematics are available be mentioned in the "open source" section?

The C Stamp and ZX microcontroller links in the "See also" section seem commercially-motivated to me. They link to the manufacturer's website, not a Wikipedia and don't really seem appropriate in a "see also" section. Perhaps these can be replaced with links to appropriate articles or removed altogether if such articles don't exist?

DMellis 03:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for an Update

We (the Arduino team) recently released the Eagle CAD files for the Arduino Diecimila and BT boards, meaning that the full hardware design information is available for nearly all the Arduino hardware. See: http://www.arduino.cc/blog/?p=17 Can someone update the first paragraph to reflect this (i.e. remove the qualifying "for older versions")? DMellis 04:10, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Done Random (talk) 15:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Diecimila image

The Diecimila shown is missing one of the capacitors next to the other one, perhaps another image would be better? SomeoneElse699211 (talk) 13:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Taken and uploaded. Random (talk) 16:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

new article on the Arduino model

Article at Wired. Should probably be integrated. Tedder (talk) 06:03, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Arduino variants

Unless a variant uses a ATMega AVR and runs the Arduino bootloader, I do not consider it to be a variant. That includes projects/products based around ARM cores. Even if they are "hardware compatible", being able to directly use shields, they are not arduino. Yngvarr (t) (c) 11:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't consider Cortino to be a variant either, but it's a derivative and it's relevant within the scope of this article. In terms of taxonomy, your removal of it was correct, but in terms of the broader "is it useful to the encyclopedia?" test, then it ought to be listed.

I would even support a separate article as List of Arduino variants and derivatives. Arduino's a big enough field to justify multiple pages.
Andy Dingley (talk) 12:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that these non-ATmega boards have a place here. The way I see it, there are four categories of hardware that can be described in this article:

1. Official Arduino boards
2. Shield-compatible ATmega-based clones
3. Other ATmega boards that can still use the Arduino bootloader/IDE
4. Finally this new class of non-ATmega boards that can use Arduino shields.

I think the section needs to be broken up, perhaps along the lines I just described. It's a little messy at the moment too and needs a clean up. Perhaps move the external links to the end of the article, or use them as inline references? --Imroy (talk) 14:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Shield

'Sheild' is mentioned, but there is no description of what a shield is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.61.130 (talk) 19:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I've added a brief section as well as an image. Tweak it as necessary. Yngvarr (t) (c) 20:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I released the shield image Yngvarr uploaded (taken one sunny afternoon on my vancouver balcony) as Public domain. Vancircuit (talk) 15:32, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Wiring / Processing

Can someone please explain the whole Wiring / Processing thing? (I don't have adequate knowledge myself).

Clearly the Arduino "uses" Wiring, and although Processing is commonly involved in Arduino-based projects it isn't the native_(sic) language. User:Mulad has just made an edit to this effect. However what's a "language", what's a "library" and what's an "environment"? AIUI, Wiring is a language (not just a library, as the article now states), and it's the source code language used for "typical" Arduino work, hosted on some form of desktop. This is then compiled into AVR machine code, possibly via some intermediate form (C++? AVR assembler?) and uploaded to the Arduino board itself.

Processing OTOH lives in the "Java world", usually on a "desktop" machine, and is compiled to Java (to Java source? direct to bytecode?) which then executes in a JVM and calls Java libraries (most obviously, AWT). There's no route from Processing source to Arduino or AVR, AFAIK. However it's also popular for two processors, one or more Arduino & a Java host such as a desktop, to co-operate as part of an overall system, linked by USB or serial.

The Processing IDE is used as the default by both Processing and Arduino-targeted desktops writing Wiring source code. I don't know if this editor / compiler is written in Processing (or whatever). I'd love to find out that I can easily swap this IDE for integration with a nicer editor, such as Eclipse (Please! Just for the right-hand clipboard shortcuts!).

As Processing books are expensive and I know of at least one person who wasted £40 on one thinking it was an Arduino coder's handbook, it would be helpful to have a clear explanation of this somewhere! Andy Dingley (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

What is it?/What can it do?

For someone not familiar with the subject this article barely answers the above questions. There is very little explaining the types of things that can be connected to the Arduino or even how. For example, unless one already knows the full meaning of the term Physical computing or reads that article first, this article tells very little about the basics of what it is. I'd suggest an easing into the subject and adding context to the physical computing term, essentially defining it inline. There's a lot of good info here, but so far it's definitely for people that already know what it is. - Taxman ^Talk 18:38, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Request for update

Hello I'm massimo banzi, co-founder of Arduino. can some of you guys edit the phrase "The project began in Italy in 2005 to make a device for controlling student-built robots less expensively than other prototyping systems available at the time." Arduino was built for Interaction Design students, robotics was never involved in the process. thanks Massimo Banzi

Would "student-built interaction design projects" be accurate instead of "student-built robots"? - Taxman ^Talk 21:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

yes that would work much better :) mbanzi —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.0.61.33 (talk) 07:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Buzz

That thing is just an Atmel AVR development board - and a very simple one. Why call it "a physical computing platform with embedded I/O support"? This sounds like buzzwords/advertisements and is not encyclopedic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.64.245.155 (talk) 22:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, the "Arduino Programming Language" is C, so call it C. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.67.95 (talk) 11:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Mostly correct. The Arduino build process page describes exactly what happens to a "sketch" when it is compiled.

1. Tabs (files) with no extension are concatenated together
2. #include "WProgram.h" is added to the front
3. Functions are searched for and prototypes for them are inserted before any statements. This means you don't have to worry about the order in which you defined functions (e.g like Perl).
4. The target's main.cxx is appended
5. This is compiled with avr-gcc, as are any other *.c or *.cpp tabs/files.
6. Finally, it's all linked together with the Arduino library

That gives you something to upload.

So, in conclusion: The language is essentially C/C++, but function prototypes are automatically generated. Otherwise the rest is an IDE and a library.

Can we stop this edit war over the language? (cleaning up my description though is welcome) --Imroy (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Link farm

Does this article need trimming per WP:LINKFARM? The most recent change to the article added only a link to a shield vendor, and that made me wonder if the article has too many links for the content it has.

Because the editor who added the link has made only that one edit to WP (at least at the time I'm writing this) the edit looks a little spammy to me. But that's just me, and this is not my article, so I will leave the link there as the community discusses.

Would these links be more at home in an Arduino wikibook? Pfagerburg (talk) 05:57, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yep, it needs pruning. The best place would be to encourage those links to go to DMOZ. tedder (talk) 06:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't have personal experience, but I've heard others say that DMOZ is the place where pending links go to die of old age. Pfagerburg (talk) 03:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I note that the Arduino group maintains a wiki-like website with several links to hardware (including the list of Arduino boards in this article), and a "playground" with an "edit" button, and a metric tonne of links. The WP article should probably point to the pages on arduino.cc. Pfagerburg (talk) 03:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Too Technical

This article is too technical for a non-expert to understand what arduino is. I propose {technical} tag. Moumouza (talk) 20:08, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

Where's the criticism section? There is so much overwhelming hate for Arduinos out there, I figured I'd come here to see what the crap that's all about. Hell, read the comment section in any one of these articles:

http://hackaday.com/category/arduino-hacks/

68.8.99.245 (talk) 06:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been reading Hack A Day for a year or two now and I know about the 'hate' for Arduino on that site. As near as I can tell, most of the "criticism" of Arduino is simply elitism. Some people aren't happy that other people are using it when, in their opinion, another solution would be better.

For example, I found this comment. He doesn't like Arduino because he thinks it should only be used for prototyping, but sees people leaving the Arduino in the final project. That's not criticising Arduino itself and I think misses the whole point of Arduino - to make it easier for people to control electronics. Not everyone has the time or expertise to design a circuit, layout a board, etch the board, solder the components on, and program any micro-controller that might be used (and then find and fix any problems on the board).

Can you provide an example of actual criticism of Arduino itself? Because what I've seen has been pretty minor. --Imroy (talk) 13:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, what a bunch of utter elitist jerks. I don't have a problem with elitism per se, but I want to hear it from people who write DSP code in their heads, not someone who's used a PIC and now thinks they can look down on Arduinos! Although it's seemingly inevitable that such jerks exist, I would question why they have encyclopedia relevance?

Personally, one of the best "Wow!" moments I've had in the last year was watching some arts grad (yes, pure arts) at Bristol Dorkbot tying some clever Processing code into an Arduino-based lump of hardware and achieving something for its sheer decorative merit, not for the geek points of how hard they'd had to work to make the hardware drivers multi-thread properly. I like Arduinos because they're a tool that the people with the interesting ideas can make work, not just the ubergeeken with the patience to wrangle hardware. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be some intelligent criticism here: http://hackaday.com/2010/01/06/arduino-io-speed-breakdown/ 68.8.99.245 (talk) 04:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)