[HN Gopher] The Death of Arduino?
___________________________________________________________________
The Death of Arduino?
https://archive.ph/05KK2
Author : ChuckMcM
Score : 320 points
Date : 2025-11-19 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.linkedin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.linkedin.com)
| chermi wrote:
| Damn. I mean it's was expected I guess. Anyway, back to my
| Chinese esp32 since they've been better for a while anyway.
| ge96 wrote:
| Teensy, maybe I finally use that stm bluepill I bought, I also
| have an unopened beagle bone black damn and orange crab
| MayeulC wrote:
| Raspbery Pi Picos are extremely capable for their price as
| well! It isn't like we are out of options these days.
| ge96 wrote:
| I actually have a KB2040 too from Adafruit, they snuck it
| in there (free) I think from when I ordered 20 of these
| metal gear servos
| chasd00 wrote:
| Sounds crazy, but I just get full pi zero 2s for any little
| hobby projects. It's just simpler to have everything even
| if I'm only blinking leds.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| New Arduino T&C: "user shall not [...] reverse-engineer the
| platform"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971039
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Echoing the comments there... this seems like a colossally dumb
| move on their part. Is there any way this doesn't just end with a
| hard fork and some new player taking over where Arduino left off?
| estimator7292 wrote:
| The other option is that Arduino simply fades away. Their
| hardware doesn't have anything to offer that you can't get on
| aliexpress or spin yourself for a tenth the cost.
|
| The framework is the only arguably valuable thing they offer,
| but even that's not enough to prop a business up on.
|
| Most likely everything will continue exactly as-is: Arduino
| hardware will become increasingly dated and undesirable, and
| open source Arduino-compatible libraries will continue
| flourishing until nobody remembers that Arduino was a hardware
| platform before it was software framework.
|
| I think we've long since passed the point where Wiring will
| ever go away, but I doubt we'll still be calling it Arduino for
| too much longer. Arduino is probably dead, and espressif is
| moving in.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Yeah I personally never really bought into Arduino. I got
| their Uno back whenever it came out but never really got into
| their whole IDE experience. Latest projects are on esp32
| using embassy which so far has been going great. Interested
| to check out rp2040 or rp2350 at some point maybe.. There are
| tons of interesting, easy options out there now
| johnea wrote:
| Thanks for the summary, since I avoid LinkedIn like the plague...
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I used to be interested in Arduino, but the hobbyist movement is
| nothing like it was in the early 2010s. In part, I think, we had
| amazing technologies (3D Printing! Arduino! CNC! Raspberry
| Pi!)... but not really that many amazing ideas on what to
| actually _do_ with it.
|
| What can I build with an Arduino that isn't better, cheaper,
| faster, and more complete as a full product on Amazon? Almost
| nothing. When I'm staring at a screen 8 hours a day as a computer
| programmer already, my body screams for less screen time, not
| more. I'd rather learn Spanish or go skiing than start a FOSS
| project; and I don't think I'm alone.
|
| I understand there's an artistic expression aspect to it... but I
| think at this point I'd rather learn photography or painting,
| actual art, for expression. Something normal people understand
| and appreciate. It's too much of the same for me.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > What can I build with an Arduino that isn't better, cheaper,
| faster, and more complete as a full product on Amazon? Almost
| nothing.
|
| I mean, my little hobby project is making the LED strips taped
| to my skis respond to an accelerometer, so they pulse brighter
| when I make a good turn. Plus Bluetooth control of the
| patterns. Not gonna find that on Amazon.
| kvam wrote:
| Please blog and post about this. I need a how to.
| blauditore wrote:
| Love it, and I agree. I've built two "star skies" for kids,
| using cheap RGB LED lights, programming them to slowly change
| color, only use warm colors, and turn off more and more stars
| over time. Nothing super fancy, but very custom to my needs.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| There are plenty of not-arduino microcontrollers that can do
| this.
|
| To your reply-writer, how do you think those products came to
| be, many of them are productization of hobbiest projects.
|
| The arduino project jumpstarted a whole ecosystem, but I
| don't that ecosystem needs arduino anymore.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > There are plenty of not-arduino microcontrollers that can
| do this.
|
| Sure. I'm responding to this bit:
|
| > better, cheaper, faster, and more complete as a full
| product on Amazon
|
| Mine's on a nRF52840 board. My point is less about Arduino
| and more about tinkering.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It sounded like OP was saying they couldn't think of any
| interesting things to tinker with since everything they
| could think of is already a product on amazon. So in this
| case it isn't about alternatives to Arduino, it's about
| alternatives to reactive LED lights for your skis.
| ale42 wrote:
| > What can I build with an Arduino that isn't better, cheaper,
| faster, and more complete as a full product on Amazon?
|
| For an end user maybe not much, but for tinkerers, a lot.
| Almost everything where you need/want customization, unique
| features, and so on. This said, you don't strictly need an
| Arduino for that, I actually (almost) never use them because
| their software library is so high level that it eats so much
| resources on the underlying microcontrollers and make things
| more complex when you want to do more advanced stuff (like
| handling interrupts). When I use them, is for some quick&dirty
| thing (e.g. I need to turn on a stripe of "smart" LEDs
| quickly), but never include them in finished things.
| analog31 wrote:
| What can you create as a programmer that isn't already a
| product? For each of us the answer is only limited by our
| interests and imagination. I use the Arduino development
| environment to create peripherals for specialized measurment
| gear, where I absolutly must control the design at the firmware
| level to make it work.
| ygjb wrote:
| As a hobbyist, it's not about being able to buy it faster,
| cheaper, or better. It's about learning how to tinker, making
| something work, and building something that is effectively the
| artistic expression of my technical skills.
|
| YMMV, but if you aren't loving the hobby element anymore and
| the itch can be scratched by reaching for a product, that's a
| shift in what you are enjoying, not an indictment of hobbies :)
| zumzum wrote:
| > When I'm staring at a screen 8 hours a day as a computer
| programmer already, my body screams for less screen time, not
| more ... and I don't think I'm alone.
|
| Isn't there a term for that: wage slavery[1]?
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Also what can I build with an Arduino that isn't cheaper,
| faster, and more complete with an STM32 Nucleo or other similar
| dev board? These days you can get a nice 32-bit ARM MCU for the
| same price (or cheaper) as an Arduino board. No need to deal
| with an 8-bit ATMEGA and its quirks.
| strix_varius wrote:
| This sounds more like your personal journey, and less like some
| broad trend.
|
| A quick check of just one of your examples shows the term "3d
| printer" is googled for literally twice as frequently today as
| it was in 2016, for instance.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| And for another n=1 input, from my perspective, 3d printing
| is MUCH BIGGER now than it was back then. Weird take from the
| parent comment!
| the__alchemist wrote:
| My 2c: I got into electronics, firmware, and PCB design during
| the Pandemic, and haven't used Arduino beyond cursory support
| for integrations. At the time, it used obsolete chips, and
| didn't have a practical advantage over STM32, Nordic, Espressif
| chips (Or dev boards) beyond name recognition. I speculate that
| there was a time before this when it had innovative UX for new
| users segment, but this hasn't been true for (at least, from my
| experience) 6 years.
| michaeljx wrote:
| I've been programming esp32 connected with soil moisture
| sensors and solenoid valves to water each individual pot of
| plants according to its own readings, instead of having a
| centrally controlled irrigation system. Overkill, I know, but
| with a cost of 8-10usd per set up it is not expensive
| gus_massa wrote:
| Photos? If you have a blog post, it may be a good post for
| HN. (Bonus points if the plants survived :) .)
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Almost every song I play on any instrument is available played
| better, more professionally, and more precisely and more
| artistically, on any music source possibly available. And yet I
| still play every day for my own pleasure.
|
| It's the act of playing, where the music itself is an important
| part, but just a part, that I enjoy.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| You are just becoming old.
|
| Less time, more money, changing hobbies, etc...
|
| It is almost always better from a practical perspective to buy
| the complete product over DIY, or even better, not buy at all.
| Those who claim otherwise are justifying their hobby. Best case
| scenario, you break even after not counting your time, which is
| actually great, because most people pay for their hobbies.
|
| The hobbyist movement didn't change, you did, life is like that
| and that's not a bad thing. The technologies change but the
| general idea stay the same. For Arduino (the brand), I think it
| is dying, but that just because you can buy generic ESP32
| boards on AliExpress for cheaper and with more variety.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| In my eyes it's quite the opposite: there is _almost nothing_
| that exists as a complete product on Amazon. Faster and
| cheaper? Yes. Better and more complete? Not a chance. But you
| have to want it bad enough, and have enough skill to do it.
|
| Arduino is (was?) one of those skills. Practice them enough,
| and you'll soon find the things you want aren't available for
| sale, at any price.
| dekhn wrote:
| Arduino and related technologies have revolutionzed scientific
| instrument making. Things that were either "too hard" or "too
| expensive" are now straightforward for hobbyist and non-
| technical scientists.
|
| For example, I build automated microscopes as a hobby and I use
| arduino products (well, used- now I use ESP32 with micropython,
| but that still depends on the Arduino API) and it's been
| tremendous for building high speed interfaces (I need to blink
| an LED at the same rate/in sync with a camera shutter
| opening/closing) . Even when I do photography, I'm still
| building arduino and other related things to help automate the
| tedious bits. And when that gets boring, I take out my guitar
| and use arduino or similar products to do audio processing in
| realtime.
|
| For many of the things I want to do, there is no product on
| Amazon, or it's obscenely expensive (XY stages typically cost
| $10K and up).
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Qualcomm-owned Arduino
|
| That's all you need to know. The old company no longer exists.
| robert_foss wrote:
| Qcom is a lawnmower, if you stick your hand in, it'll chop it
| off.
| seemaze wrote:
| "You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' - lawnmower
| doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you.
| Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower." - Bryan Cantrill
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| For anyone else who can't get to LinkedIn right now:
|
| https://archive.ph/05KK2
| analog31 wrote:
| How's this affect the Arduino IDE and libraries? At this point
| those seem more important than Arduino-branded hardware.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You don't actually need the Arduino IDE. I haven't used it in
| years. You can use any IDE (or just makefiles) and gcc.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Why not just use whatever IDE you prefer and upload via the
| CLI?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Certainly an option. The IDE is nice for beginners, which
| seemed like a major point to Arduino.
| andoando wrote:
| Get VSCode and install PlatformIO extension. Its way better
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'll give it a try. Even if it is better, that's might
| not help noobs since there are tons of tutorials using
| the Arduino one. That could change over time though.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| arduino ide is pretty terrible anyway. Swap to your normal ide
| of choice, and start using PlatformIO. way better experience,
| and you can actually have all your important config in normal
| text files on git/etc.. instead of having to tweak UI settings
| in Arduino studio.
| dekhn wrote:
| The only thing of value left in Arduino is the API (which has
| been ported to non-Arduinos) and the drivers (of which there
| are hundreds; Adafruit is one of the main developers).
| lysace wrote:
| Someone needs to step up to fork and maintain it.
|
| I imagine that Adafruit, Sparkfun and some other companies are
| highly motivated.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The new terms are entirely unacceptable for any use.
|
| It was nice while it lasted. RIP, Arduino.
| hughdangus wrote:
| You really shouldn't be using Arduino over STM32. Low end STM
| boards that are price matched with Arduino are not only more
| powerful by almost a magnitude, but also have an excellent
| debugging IDE.
|
| The only thing to watch out for are 3V3 vs 5V but then again if
| you're doing anything worthwhile you've got a stash of buffers,
| op amps and MOSFETs.
| cattown wrote:
| Doesn't this only really affect actual Arduino brand products.
| There's tons of just-as-good cheap knockoffs available. See
| Elegoo kits easily found on Amazon for example. The IDE is open
| source with the AGPL license.
|
| Can't we just cut Qualcomm out of the supply chain and keep going
| as normal without too much disruption? Doesn't even feel like a
| hard fork is needed. Just don't buy Qualcomm's crap.
| wmf wrote:
| The goal is probably to prevent any knockoffs of the next
| generation products.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not that anyone's even bothered knocking off their _current_
| generation products. The majority of Arduino clones are still
| using AVR or occasionally SAMD processors - Arduino 's newer
| boards were never really accepted by the community. Some
| makers have even gone another direction entirely -
| ESP32-based development boards are popular, and there's a
| compatibility layer for using the Arduino IDE with those.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Sounds great in theory. But this would put a serious dent in
| the Arduino opensource community and fragment support.
|
| Arduino is the unifying umbrella that keeps everything
| together. With that gone the platform will surely lose.
| andoando wrote:
| Esp32 is just as big if not bigger.
| mort96 wrote:
| Espressif has a pretty good Arduino compatibility layer for
| the ESP32 series. So you can follow Arduino tutorials and
| almost everything will "just work". This what I use for
| quick and dirty projects.
|
| For more "serious" things, you have the ESP-IDF, which is a
| pretty good C-style interface to all sorts of hardware
| features. Less newbie friendly than the Arduino interface,
| but gives you more control. And it can be used in
| combination with the Arduino interface.
|
| And then, as the cherry on top, you have their official
| Rust HAL for the ESP chips, implementing the standard Rust
| embedded-hal interfaces so it should "just work" with the
| growing Rust embedded ecosystem.
|
| It's honestly impressive. The only thing that has kept
| Arduino competitive is their brand, good reputation, and
| focus on the education and tinkerer space. I frankly don't
| understand what value Qualcomm sees in Arduino if they're
| just gonna throw away that reputation and education
| friendliness.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| ESP32 is fantastic. I just ordered four more today for
| various projects. Barely cracked $20 CAD and free
| shipping from Ali.
| chpatrick wrote:
| And a dev board only costs a couple of dollars on
| AliExpress.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| I wish there was a esp32 board with optically isolated 24v
| level shifters and screw terminals...
| inamberclad wrote:
| Thanks to the open source nature of the Arduino
| ecosystem, you can make it so!
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Ars longa, vita brevis
| general1465 wrote:
| You can search through AliExpress, but I am afraid that
| your request is so specific that you will need to design
| something yourself.
| bityard wrote:
| ESPs are great, but their hobbyist ecosystem ultimately
| relies on the goodwill of a Chinese company that could just
| as easily decide they want to go the way of Qualcomm, or
| worse.
| mort96 wrote:
| Any company can "go the way of Qualcomm", as you call it.
| To my knowledge, there's no indication that there's any
| more danger of them going that way relative to, say, TI
| or ST?
|
| Don't get me wrong, the fall of Arduino is a real loss.
| Espressif is a company in the business of making money,
| while Arduino's mission was to build a robust tinkerer
| ecosystem. Absent an acquisition, it's _probably_ fair to
| say that Arduino would be less likely than Espressif, ST
| or TI to do bullshit like this.
| ahepp wrote:
| > users are now explicitly forbidden from reverse-engineering or
| even attempting to understand how the platform works unless
| Arduino gives permission.
|
| I briefly looked at their IDE and CLI repos and GitHub claims
| they're AGPL and GPL 3 respectively. I didn't see a CLA when I
| looked at their contribution guide.
|
| Am I missing something here? What basis do they have to restrict
| users' rights to reverse engineer the software?
| reactordev wrote:
| This is _Legal Team_ not doing their due diligence. Just
| throwing a blanket terms of service update across all
| "properties".
| adfm wrote:
| Arduino is as influential as it is controversial and has been
| from the beginning.
|
| https://arduinohistory.github.io
|
| https://hackaday.com/2016/03/04/wiring-was-arduino-before-ar...
| scuff3d wrote:
| Jesus, they just ripped it off whole sale and claimed it was
| their own.
| silvanocerza wrote:
| Arduino repos require a CLA since years, it was introduced 5 or
| 6 years ago if I remember correctly.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Isn't this quite useless, when they don't have the copyright
| on the initial version, since they didn't require a CLA back
| then?
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| CLA allows them to relicense your contributions under their
| own license - e.g. proprietary
|
| A DCO would be the more friendly option.
| jsheard wrote:
| The new Arduino UNO Q features a beefy Qualcomm SOC running
| Linux, alongside an STM32 microcontroller which is programmable
| from the Arduino IDE. The MCU side is wide open, but the SOC
| side is full of proprietary firmware blobs, so I assume the
| lawyers are concerned about those being reverse engineered.
| SimianSci wrote:
| Adafruit is wrong here
|
| A missing piece of the puzzle that i feel is ommitted in
| Adafruits posting, is that the changes only affect the Arduino
| Cloud Services, which provide various github-like services for
| the arduino ecosystem. Looking over the changes with this in
| mind, it seems a lawyer just applied the same standard SaaS
| legal language to what is effectively a SaaS offering, pretty
| normal in most cases.
|
| None of these changes will affect the Arduino open-source
| hardware project.
|
| [EDIT] - confirmed: https://www.arduino.cc/en/privacy-policy/
| all the legal language applies to the website, online services,
| forums, etc.
| umanwizard wrote:
| If true that's an absolutely gigantic omission, bordering on
| outright lying.
| yapyap wrote:
| Yeah I already found it odd that it was about what "users
| uploaded" seeing that Arduino is not necessarily a platform
| to upload things to, it can be, but not necessarily.
|
| Also Adafruit being a store, isnt there a matter of conflict
| of interest with posts like this?
| londons_explore wrote:
| And I can't imagine Qualcomms lawyers put much thought into
| this specific clause.
|
| As soon as it becomes a PR nightmare, they might just take
| that clause out.
| teraflop wrote:
| More precisely, from the TOS:
|
| > The Site is part of the platform developed and managed by
| Arduino, which allows users to take part in the discussions
| on the Arduino forum, the Arduino blog, the Arduino User
| Group, the Arduino Discord channel, and the Arduino Project
| Hub, and to access the Arduino main website, subsites,
| Arduino Cloud, Arduino Courses, Arduino Certifications,
| Arduino Docs, the Arduino EDU kit sites to release works
| within the Contributor License Agreement program, and to
| further develop the Arduino open source ecosystem
| (collectively, the "Platform").
|
| > 8.2 User shall not: translate, decompile or reverse-
| engineer the Platform, or engage in any other activity
| designed to identify the algorithms and logic of the
| Platform's operation, unless expressly allowed by Arduino or
| by applicable license agreements
|
| So yeah, it seems like the definition of "Platform" is
| limited only to their hosted services.
| flockonus wrote:
| Can we please avoid the clickbait meta of "Death of" / "Is __
| Dead?" for things that are obviously not?
|
| The news describe an important shift, but just describe that it
| is, no need for "youtubefication" of titles here.
| skylurk wrote:
| Arduino's hackability was its unique selling point. When it is
| no longer hackable, what is left (of the company)?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Plenty out there to fill the void.
|
| Stuff like https://www.adafruit.com/product/4062
| skylurk wrote:
| Fair enough, not a _unique_ selling point. But an important
| one. Without it, who are the customers?
| nocman wrote:
| I don't think in this case that most people who know what
| Arduino is would be at all mislead by the title. Being "dead"
| doesn't _have_ to mean that a company ceases to exist. There
| are plenty of what I would call "dead" companies that still
| make money every year. "Dead" can be used figuratively. In this
| case, meaning that though the company continues to exist, the
| reason for which many people bought their products is now gone.
| fidotron wrote:
| This is not good. Qualcomm are [expletives] anyway, but we need
| more activity in the connected microcontroller space in the west.
|
| Never have been a fan of the programming style encouraged by the
| Arduino SDK/API, so hopefully this demise will allow someone to
| enter the space with something that is actually competitive with
| the Espressif devices. Have a decent API and connectivity, at the
| same time, unfathomable stuff. The Picos are closest, but the
| connectivity situation is a mess.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Espressif was just handed the whole market on a platter. Unless
| raspberry can significantly expand their market but I doubt it.
| Year of the RISK V?
| fidotron wrote:
| It's one of those things you need a benevolent billionaire to
| bootstrap which will probably never make money.
|
| The CPU cores aren't the problem (just use Hazard3) - it's
| all the rest, particularly the WiFi.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| There are other vendors of Wifi chips. I could see Nordic
| seeing this being a great collaboration to further capture
| marketplace for IoT connectivity beyond Bluetooth.
| fidotron wrote:
| The brilliance of the ESP devices is not needing anything
| not included on a basic dev board for a huge raft of
| applications. The peripheral design is positively wonky,
| but they do just work.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| I know the code for the Wi-Fi side is a blob infested mess,
| as usual. But by now, ESP32 has an open source MAC
| implementation, blob free.
|
| So we know with certainty that it's possible to make Wi-Fi
| hardware work in a blob-free fashion on a production grade
| MCU.
| fidotron wrote:
| Right. We also know how to do code signing and
| deterministic builds so you could build it and ensure the
| code you see is what is being executed and that is what
| is certified.
|
| It's just rather boring to get all the ducks in a row to
| do it.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Since when is any of that a requirement?
| fidotron wrote:
| None of it is a requirement to work on the happy path.
|
| To work as part of a reasonably secure platform that
| still allows people to develop on it and responsibly sell
| consumer hardware based on it, yes, it's necessary.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of just getting it to work on the happy
| path. In this case, the rest of it sounds like doing
| extra work for no reason.
|
| If you don't use the "happy path" builds, the choice is
| yours, and the consequences are your own. Simple as.
| fidotron wrote:
| That tinkering attitude is the root of the problem in the
| Arduino ecosystem.
|
| Just do things properly - it only has to be done by the
| vendor anyway, and no one else needs to touch it.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Unless raspberry can significantly expand their market but
| I doubt it. Year of the RISK V?
|
| The RP2350 _has_ two RISC-V cores (and two Cortex M33 cores).
| MayeulC wrote:
| The ESP32-C3 also has a RISC-V core.
| Iulioh wrote:
| What about ESP32?
| ceroxylon wrote:
| "Espressif devices" = ESP32
| mikestaas wrote:
| the 8266 is pretty nice as well
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _Never have been a fan of the programming style encouraged by
| the Arduino SDK /API_
|
| Can you elaborate on that? I have never done anything with
| Arduino, and after reading this thread I have my doubts that I
| ever will. But I am curious to hear your thoughts about it,
| thanks!
| chrsw wrote:
| I got upvoted then downvoted in the acquisition thread where I
| suggested this would happen. Anyone who thinks the old Arduino
| still exists is simply naive.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Welp Qualcomm gonna Qualcomm. It was expected, but I did not
| expect it to be _that_ blunt.
|
| It takes a serious pair to "forbid reverse-engineering" on a
| platform aimed at tinkerers.
| RyJones wrote:
| I could tell you a long, boring story about that; however, it
| would be long, and boring.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Don't threaten me with a good time
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Please do
| blueflow wrote:
| Grandpa telling war stories!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Reminds me of Android. Which is supposed to be a Linux distro.
| dingnuts wrote:
| It is a Linux distribution, it just turned out that "let me
| interrupt for a moment" meme was actually correct and what
| you wanted was a portable GNU distribution with an open
| kernel, and instead you got a Linux distribution with
| Google's user space and now instead of realizing the
| terminology was wrong from the get to you've misidentified
| the very trick Google played on us.
|
| Turns out a kernel is just a kernel after all, and you really
| do want GNU+Linux, not just Linux.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I said distro not gnu/linux for a reason, but yeah what I
| wanted out of Android is a tinkerer friendly OS. I've long
| since abandoned Android anyway.
| esseph wrote:
| What did to accept in Androids place, and did you find
| your tinkerer friendly OS?
| awalsh128 wrote:
| Stallman appreciates you saying so. :)
| petabyt wrote:
| Rockchip does the same thing with some of their closed source
| binaries
| lemonwaterlime wrote:
| I was never a fan of the Maker Movement. While it did get people
| to tinker, there was always this massive gap between lighting up
| an LED and using EEPROM, JTAG debugging, interrupts, and even
| designing some of the more intricate circuit designs to pull of
| intermediate projects. I found that there were people who knew
| how to do that stuff and the rest just trying to get by.
|
| The last time I used Arduino, I ended up just coding the bare
| metal out of necessity for the things I was trying to do. Some
| functionality of the chips was literally not accessible unless
| you break out of the sandbox. But then I wondered why we didn't
| just get people set up without shielding them so much from what
| it actually takes to do embedded development. Ultimately, the
| failure of the Maker Movement to me is that there is not an
| upgrade path. You start blinking LEDs and then what? Thus, lots
| of people end up being eternal beginners, which I don't think is
| helpful.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| you aren't a fan because some people never built anything
| advanced with it? thats a pretty wild take.
| lemonwaterlime wrote:
| I'm not a fan because, pedagogically, the structure of how it
| played out never allowed or helped people actually advance in
| the craft of it. There are better ways to build a tinker
| culture where people actually improve over time towards what
| an experienced EE and such can do. I rarely saw that
| progression.
|
| What happens as a result of this is that someone spends a lot
| of time tinkering and then they think they know what they are
| doing. With that confidence, they might apply for a job or
| take on a more dangerous project. The job will say they don't
| actually have the skill, even though they have been putting
| in the time. And the overconfidence could lead to trying to
| do more dangerous things than they should on projects.
|
| A tinkering culture is fine, but it needs to have safety and
| skill progression as its foundation. Most Maker Spaces I have
| been to have done a good job trying to keep things safe, but
| ultimately, people are people.
| nocoiner wrote:
| You're expecting tinkerers to approach the skill level of
| an experienced EE? Then what is the education and career
| experience for?
|
| That also seems to have very little to due with the safety
| concerns you express in your last two paragraphs.
| lemonwaterlime wrote:
| "Approaching" means to go towards the skillset. A home
| chef can develop better knife skills when cutting
| vegetables. That is approaching being a more professional
| cook, yet it does not mean the person could work in a
| restaurant. Maybe they could. We're talking about
| asymptotic.
|
| If you are having understanding this distinction, then
| that is the exact point I am making about the Maker
| Movement. It is accepted that people progress if they do,
| and if they don't, then tough. There is a balance between
| perpetual tinkering, some sort of progression culture,
| and a full on degree.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Why must they "progress"? Why can't people have hobbies?
| If they finish their blinky LED project and decide that's
| enough investment into the hobby, why is that a problem?
|
| Think about how many thousands have purchased a musical
| instrument only to abandon the hobby after a few months.
| Is that a failure of music-as-a-hobby or just humans
| being humans?
|
| Most people I know who get into electronics as a hobby
| aren't looking at it as a potential career. Myself
| included! This is the most absurd take I've seen all day.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > I'm not a fan because, pedagogically, the structure of
| how it played out never allowed or helped people actually
| advance in the craft of it. There are better ways to build
| a tinker culture where people actually improve over time
| towards what an experienced EE and such can do. I rarely
| saw that progression.
|
| Did you help establish it?
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't think Arduino users need to worry too much about
| safety. Obviously, don't build hobby projects that put
| lives on the line, but otherwise they're pretty harmless.
|
| Who says a tinkering culture needs to have skill
| progression? Maybe people just like to tinker. Maybe simple
| things are still useful.
|
| Let people do things. Let people enjoy things.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I wonder how many young EEs of today can point to Arduino
| as their first exposure to electronics. You'll probably
| have a harder time finding those who don't.
|
| As for "progression", I suppose you're disappointed that
| very few bicycle owners become professional cyclists.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Long fan of Classic VB6. While you are in the happy path,
| you fly. But if you try something outside that, it's almost
| impossible.
|
| But there are a lot of real world problems that can be
| solved with a form and a few buttons, and you look like a
| magician for normal people.
|
| I still have one project in production, but the compiler is
| getting harder and harder to install.
|
| Anyway, there is room for beginers tools, in spite they may
| have a tall second step.
|
| ---
|
| Is there a good totorial for upgrading from Arduino to a
| proffesional microcontroler? (Or you can write one.)
| kevin42 wrote:
| That's a pretty condescending take.
|
| To some extent I agree that the upgrade path is lacking. I
| recently helped a friend move out of the ino file model into
| building regular c++ applications because his design was
| getting pretty complicated. Once he realized that he knew more
| of c++ than he thought he did, it was a game changer for him.
|
| At the same time, people have done some pretty amazing stuff
| using the Arduino platform without knowing how to use the
| things you mention. What you call eternal beginners have
| accomplished a lot. James Bruton does some pretty impressive
| robotics work using Arduino.
| codexb wrote:
| Look at any hobby and there are lots of beginners and casuals
| and far fewer people who are very skilled at it. The Maker
| hobby is no different. It's certainly not a problem of the
| microcontrollers available. Arduino is the simplest, but there
| are plenty of others.
|
| The "blinky LED" roadblock is really just a result of the fact
| that more complex "maker" projects require some amount of
| electrical or engineering or fabrication knowledge and skill,
| which takes some trial and error and practice -- the same thing
| that limits progress in lots of other hobbies.
|
| The real "Maker" movement is the demand that drives so many
| consumer level fabrication tools and components that were only
| available as expensive industrial and commercial orders in the
| past -- 3d printers, laser cutters, microcontrollers, IC
| sensors, brushless motors -- there are so many options now that
| just weren't available at all 20 years ago.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Attitudes like this are genuinely toxic. If you think there are
| problems, volunteer your time to help people learn. Don't sit
| in judgement.
| chemotaxis wrote:
| > I was never a fan of the Maker Movement. While it did get
| people to tinker, there was always this massive gap between
| lighting up an LED and using EEPROM, JTAG debugging,
| interrupts, and even designing some of the more intricate
| circuit designs to pull of intermediate projects. I found that
| there were people who knew how to do that stuff and the rest
| just trying to get by.
|
| Intense gatekeeping in the electronics community is precisely
| why communities such as Arduino could flourish in the first
| place (and their creators could benefit financially).
| Ultimately, people just want to get stuff done and Arduino is a
| way of doing it. If you go to Stack Exchange, someone will tell
| you to buy a college textbook and come back in six months once
| you understand Laplace transforms. An artist working on an
| installation doesn't need that. A person building an automated
| cat feeder doesn't need that. In fact, almost no one does, it's
| just something we torture EE students with.
|
| I think a lot of the negativity toward Arduino boils down to
| saying "nooo, it's supposed to be hard!". But if you want the
| Arduino crowd to get more interested in your field of
| expertise, you need to build them a ramp, not to tell them
| they're not real electrical engineers.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| Teensy is the best imo...would love to see that expand into more
| boards/specific use cases.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Much more expensive though.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Are they?
|
| $24 for a Teensy 4.0 over at Sparkfun. That seems reasonable
| to me.
|
| I do miss the older Teensy 3's and 2's.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| Depends which model. Arduino Mega retails in Europe for
| around 50 euro.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Was looking for this comment. Long Live Teensy!
| adhoc32 wrote:
| Teensy 4.1 is a beast, also quite power efficient.
| kvam wrote:
| What are the alternatives for aspiring tinkerers now?
|
| My wife (cybernetics engineer) and I are buying a 3D printer and
| planned getting an Arduino as an entry point. What should we do
| instead? What are the best communities and resources?
| radeeyate wrote:
| I first got into Raspberry Pi Picos, but I've also been
| experimenting with Esp32's and some of the nRF chips. I mostly
| do CircuitPython on them but Arduino is a supported platform on
| those I believe.
| swsieber wrote:
| I got a couple of RP2040 boards recently and I'm amazed at
| how easy it is to just get stuff done. Between the native usb
| support and the circuit python support it's been a breeze. I
| just got a couple of boards up and running uart in a daisy
| chain. It was intimidating, but the circuitpython docs made
| it relatively simple.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| ESP32.
|
| I'm using ESP32 with platformio which has a dedicated community
| https://community.platformio.org/tag/espressif32
|
| I've used devkit from M5stack, waveshare and adafruit.
|
| (M5Stack has a full line of products for tinkering with many
| sensors & controllers)
|
| You can also find many cheaper no-brand devkit anywhere but
| quality & docs can be unreliable.
| doph wrote:
| ESP32 - quite a range of dev boards and places like Seeed and
| Adafruit have a nice selection of accessories. Adafruit
| develops CircuitPython which is IMO the lowest barrier to entry
| for programming MCUs. Adafruit even has CircuitPython sketches
| on their site for how to interface with the components they
| sell.
|
| Rust on ESP32 is still a bit early - the HAL crate is still
| pretty unstable, but the toolchain is quite nice and I'm able
| to be productive enough that I never reach for C or C++.
| skhameneh wrote:
| STM32 boards and PlatformIO.
|
| ESP32 is quite popular (as seen by other suggestions) but I
| find the quality of Espressif, hardware/software/support, is
| widely varied.
|
| FWIW PlatformIO works with Arduino and ESP32 (and will give you
| a better experience in so many ways)
| giobox wrote:
| Everyone I know who is into tinkering with microcontrollers
| moved onto ESP32 a long time ago now. I actually thought this
| headline was going to link to an article about ESP32's
| popularity. VSCode with the PlatformIO extension has been great
| for me when working with them:
|
| https://platformio.org/
| chasd00 wrote:
| The feather series of boards from Adafruit +
| Curcuit/Micropython works really well if you just want to make
| stuff happen instead of tuning a toolchain and, like, setting
| up clocks with asm.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's like Verizon buying Tumblr and suddenly realizing they
| bought a porno site.
| jsheard wrote:
| It was Yahoo who bought them, but yeah.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Verizon bought them out eventually.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think Yahoo was a patsy for more bad acquisitions than
| anyone. It seemed so bad I wonder if the point was that if
| you were a well connected teen and had a dad who worked in
| private equity you could get your dad to pull some favors to
| get Yahoo to buy your startup to frame yourself as a
| successful founder in an act of "achievement laundering"
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Tumblr died around 2013 ~ a lot of the key people I joined for
| were long gone. Last I logged in (yesterday actually) a lot
| more people I follow deactivated their accounts. Tumblr was a
| great platform that was not managed correctly, even the new
| owners aren't really scratching the original itch of Tumblr.
| aeve890 wrote:
| >The most striking addition: users are now explicitly forbidden
| from reverse-engineering or even attempting to understand how the
| platform works unless Arduino gives permission.
|
| Damn, like that's ever stopped the very people that like to
| reverse engineer things.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| It doesn't stop much, but it sure is a bad sign.
|
| When Qualcomm got its hands on Arduino, the best case scenario
| was that Arduino influence would encourage Qualcomm to be more
| open to small developers, and the worst case scenario was that
| Qualcomm would devour Arduino and its degenerate lawyer culture
| would ruin all that's good about it.
|
| This is an update towards the latter.
| chaosprint wrote:
| > The risk is that moats like that are made of trust. If, 12
| months from now, people see licenses tightening, non-Qualcomm
| boards lagging, or Arduino tooling getting tied to Qualcomm
| accounts, the same community that cheered UNO Q will call it a
| takeover. Right now the messaging is working -- "we stay open, we
| just get more powerful" -- but the community is watching.
| (facebook.com)
|
| https://entropytown.com/articles/2025-10-07-qualcomm-to-acqu...
|
| Only a month...
| boredumb wrote:
| I thought this was going to be an article about the ESP-32s
| egypturnash wrote:
| "the press release seems like it was made by ChatGPT when you put
| it through those AI detectors?"
|
| so does the image at the end of your post, guys, I'm an artist
| who's bought blinky stuff from Adafruit in the past and this
| makes me sad.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I've been a supporter of refunds over change to terms and
| conditions for this specific reasons
| FpUser wrote:
| Well, China will supply XiDuino in no time.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Not sure if you're joking, but of course they already have:
|
| https://www.seeedstudio.com/xiao-series-page
| SkyeCA wrote:
| I can't speak to all their products, but their nRF52840
| offering is very good for those who want to build BLE based
| devices.
| jajuuka wrote:
| All they had to do was leave it alone and bridge the gap between
| Arduino and Snapdragon boards and they would have a good thing
| going. Was a waste of money to buy up Arduino and ruin it.
| Mr_Eri_Atlov wrote:
| Raspberry Pi Pico and ESP32 will have to be my new toolbox mains
| johndubchak wrote:
| Time for a large industry shift to RISC-V?
| johndubchak wrote:
| Does this mean we might see an industry shift to RISC-V?
| bityard wrote:
| As a maker, I've been following Adafruit since they sold a
| handful of products, probably assembled and boxed on Limor's
| dining room table.
|
| Adafruit has forked microcontroller libraries and toolchains
| before, and a huge chunk of their success has been directly due
| to Arduino and related things. So it will not surprise me if they
| are gearing up to announce their brand-spanking new Arduino-
| compatible devices, software, and ecosystem.
|
| They could call it Adaduino.
| ptorrone wrote:
| FruitDuino was taken
| jsheard wrote:
| Adafruit already sells own-brand Arduino clones. They have a
| whole line of Uno-shaped boards with various microcontrollers,
| some drop-in compatible with the original Uno, and others with
| more modern chips.
|
| https://www.adafruit.com/category/818
| bityard wrote:
| I know, I'm talking about the rest.
| yapyap wrote:
| The fact that they added some AI generated image to this is the
| cherry on top.
| Dig1t wrote:
| >integration of all user data (including minors) into Qualcomm's
| global data ecosystem. Military weird things and more.
|
| Would be very curious to learn what "Military weird things" means
| exactly..
| theknarf wrote:
| That didn't take long. RIP Arduino.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Didn't everyone kind of migrate to more capable chips like ESP32
| and STM32 in the intervening decade since Arduino got big and
| commercial?
| Fokamul wrote:
| Oh my god, we are forbidden from reverse engineering Arduino SW.
| That's it, forbidden, we cannot literally do it, because some
| C-suit buffoon said so.
|
| See, open their SW in Ghidra or IDA and see for yourself, big
| pop-up and blank PE decompilation.
|
| "By Qualcomm CEO buffoon, you cannot reverse engineer my
| software, muhahaha."
|
| Qualcomm should sell this idea, VMProtect and others will go
| broke over night.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| As usual, the answer to this headline's question is no.
| ggerules wrote:
| So how the heck does the change in TOS work for the
| processing.org environment? That was an IDE that wraps around
| Java and a bunch of libraries. Arduino came along and borrowed
| the processing IDE put in an older gcc crosscompiler for the
| fleet of Arduino chips. They are the same IDEs but with different
| backends. If you can't reverse engineer the Arduino IDE, it was
| already borrowed from the processing people and open sourced. So
| are the processing people in danger of TOS violation? Or is it
| the reverse?
| egonschiele wrote:
| esp32 already exists, so there's a hardware alternative. What's
| the primary issue -- is it the lack of competition to the Arduino
| IDE? I have dabbled in Arduino but don't know enough to
| understand, but my impression was on the hardware side there are
| already alternatives that are better.
|
| Obviously not discounting what a huge blow this is (and right
| when I was planning to explore Arduino more), but practically
| speaking, what can we do to help?
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