Talk:Arduino/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Images needed

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)

Pronunciation

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.

License

• 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)

Links

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

History

when was the Arduino first published? or developed?

Name

It's not that critical... but the lines related to the name are really confusing: the meaning of the germanic origin is not important, while it is the relation to the historical character and hence the town: one of the first incubator of computer science in the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gbarberi (talk • contribs) 19:59, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

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)

I'd like to suggest that some sample applications/projects be referenced to give people an idea of what can be accomplished.

Also, DMellis, please make any additions you feel would be useful!

TomTrottier (talk) 20:56, 14 May 2012 (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)

Please include the FEZ Domino. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.155.23.24 (talk) 23:55, 18 August 2010 (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)

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)

I don't find this article too technical, but rather neutral - as expected from encyclopedic content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.68.19.38 (talk) 11:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I clarified the lead so that a non-technical person would at least know what an Arduino is. I removed the {{technical}} template, because the technical content is appropriate for a person that has the technical background to use an Arduino. Obankston (talk) 17:19, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Usage?

This article barely mentions any examples of what Arduinos are used for, focusing way too much on the specs and software. Nave.notnilc (talk) 01:25, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree. This is not an encyclopedia article, but a boring datasheet. Mazarin07 (talk) 22:20, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Attack of the Clones

Okay, there are simply way too many clones listed on the page. I am tempted to simply go through and remove around half of them. Comments? Nave.notnilc (talk) 02:25, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Please do! Or even kill the whole section on clones, and rewrite it; it's definitely notable that the Arduino has set a standard that others are following, but having links to every one of them (and directly to the manufacturers' web shops!) is definitely going too far. (And the wording of the opening paragraphs makes it read like the section was only inserted as a thinly veiled advertisement for the Freeduino to begin with.) -- magetoo 22:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest an alternative? How about a new "list of Arduino clones" page? If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Electronics_lists you will see that this worked out well for a number of other pages. Guy Macon 03:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If that's okay with everyone else (the ever present "is this list encyclopedic" question, etc) I think it would be a good solution. This article could perhaps just have a brief mention along the lines of "the design is open and it has led to the creation of several compatible boards, such as (notable example 1) and (notable example 2)" with a link to the list as "main article: list of Arduino compatible boards". (btw, "compatible" is probably better than "clone" here) If someone who is familiar with the various clones could do it, that'd be great. -- magetoo 12:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

You have to keep in mind that many of those boards represents a person or company trying to make a profit. Giving special attention to a couple of notable examples isn't fair to the others. I suggest simply linking to the list without giving any boards special treatment.

Also, what does everyone think of a companion list listing shields?

Guy Macon 14:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, the key word is "notable", by which I meant things that would be interesting for someone reading this article; like the first clone to be made, the first one to use a more powerful microcontroller, or the most popular one (if there ever can be a clear "winner" in that regard...) but obviously it has to be verifiable and add something to the article. Not suggesting that there absolutely must be examples mentioned just for the sake of it, and a plain link to the list will work just fine if you want to go ahead and split. -- magetoo 22:29, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I doubt any number of shields are notable enough for an entire list; I think the few mentioned on the page are sufficient as a representive-ish sample. I do hope to get going on a list of arduino compatibles page, though. Nave.notnilc (talk) 15:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

[Outdent] The notability requirement for items on lists is considerably relaxed compared to other types of articles. The list itself has to be notable, of course, but once that has been established completeness has a higher priority than notability. A good example is List of 7400 series integrated circuits. Some of the parts are not particularly notable. Also, it helps to consider the use most lists get. I use the 7400 list a lot; it's the best place to answer questions like "what is a 74HC45" or "what is the number for a BCD to Decimal chip?" Guy Macon 15:43, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

See "...Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria..." in WP:LSC for more on notability requirements for items on lists. Guy Macon 20:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I'm one the co-founders of Arduino. Can I propose two changes? 1. The bar is not located in Via Arduino but it's simply a bar called Arduino (minor edit) 2. I would propose we change the term "Clone" and replace it with "Derivative" (or something that works better in english)."Clone" sounds a bit derogatory while in the spirit of open source these boards are derivatives of our original design that we welcome. I consider clones only identical copies of the board using the Arduino name without authorisation (i.e. not contributing anything to the community) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Massimo banzi (talk • contribs) 10:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I just made the change to the name of the bar, and will change the "clones" as soon as we reach a consensus as to what replacement is best.

I like the term "third party implementations" or some variation of it better than "clones" or "derivatives." "clone" implies less variation than is the case, and "derivative" implies that other *duino designs incorporate work by the Arduino team but the Arduino design does not incorporate work by other *duino designers. Comments, anyone?

The term that I see commonly used within the Arduino community is "derivatives", and I think it's quite important to distinguish between clones (which as Massimo mentioned are direct copies of the official models that are sold as a "counterfeit" of the real thing) and other Arduino-compatible boards that are encouraged by the Arduino team. The term "derivative" is quite accurate in that they do incorporate elements of work by the Arduino team, even if it's something as trivial as the header spacing. It's certainly a better term than "clone", which is used within the Arduino community to mean something different to the way it's used in this article at present. I will change the terminology from "clone" to "derivative". --JonOxer (talk) 06:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

[Outdent]

As I wrote in the comment you replied to, I object to the term "derivative" because it implies that other *duino designs incorporate work by the Arduino team but the Arduino design does not incorporate work by other *duino designers. Do you have a response to this objection?

As for whether the term is commonly used within the Arduino community, I did some Google searches of various terms, first seaching the entire web and then searching only arduino.cc. Please note that this method gives very rough and imprecise answers; for example most occurrences of "arduino clone" refer to hardware, but many occurrences of "arduino implementation" refer to software. That being said, my results were:

"arduino compatible": About 109,000 results

"arduino clone": About 7,890 results

"arduino implementation": About 540 results

"arduino derivative": About 271 results

"arduino copy": About 93 results

"arduino compatible" site:arduino.cc: About 3,170 results

"arduino clone" site:arduino.cc: About 506 results

"arduino implementation" site:arduino.cc: 26 results

"arduino derivative" site:arduino.cc: 8 results

"arduino copy" site:arduino.cc: 11 results

It seems clear that "Arduino Compatible" is the term most commonly used within the Arduino community. I have no objection to it. One might argue that this nounifies / nominalizes the verb "compatible", but the PC community has been using the term that way for many years. Guy Macon 20:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting data. My response to the objection about implying official Arduino designs don't derive from third-party boards is that it's irrelevant. The "derivation" is probably bidirectional, as you suggest, but whether or not official designs derive from unofficial designs doesn't stop it being true that unofficial designs derive from the official designs. This is the same question that arises with Linux distributions, particularly the oft-discussed relationship between Debian and Ubuntu: distributions aren't a neat hierarchical tree that only "derive" in one direction. Likewise official Arduino boards and unofficial "equivalent" boards likely derive from each other. To put this in context and disclose my interests, I manufacture the "TwentyTen" board. It is most assuredly "derived" from the Arduino design, without question. But looking at it the other way around in the context of official designs deriving from unofficial designs, before the first unit was manufactured and before the Uno was released I sent the complete TwentyTen design files to the Arduino team in case they found something useful for their own purposes. Some time later the Uno was released. I don't know if they ended up getting any inspiration from the TwentyTen design or not, and it's theoretically possible that in some tiny way the Uno design "derived" something from the TwentyTen, even if only because they didn't like something in the TwentyTen and specifically decided not to do things in a similar way as a result. Even with that context, I vastly prefer that the TwentyTen be labelled a "derivative" of Arduino rather than a "clone" of it. "Clone" simply is not accurate in this context. "Derivative" may not be a perfect description, but it's certainly more accurate than "clone". The term "clone" is more akin to "counterfeit". --JonOxer (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

How about organizing the list like this: "Shield compatible" (fits on a standard Arduino), Mega shield compatible", "Arduino IDE compatible" and "Aduino form factor compatible" (same mounting holes as an Arduino, size identical to or smaller than Arduino).

May I make a suggestion for the official Arduino website? I would like it to be made explicit that the title "Arduino" is reserved for the official product, that the Arduino team has no objection to other *duino names, and that anyone is free to use the name "Freeduino" with no objections from other freeduino makers.

Finally, I really do think that the clone section is getting too large, will only get larger, and should be moved to a "list of Arduino implementations" page. A good example of such a list is List of 7400 series integrated circuits. Such lists are very helpful in answering questions like "what is a Rainbowduino?" or "is there a shield that adds a CAN interface?" A while back I put together a system with an Arduino Mega, an Ethernet shield, a Thermocouple shield and a 1024x768 VGA shield. A separate page listing shields would have made it easier to determine which shield I could buy off the shelf and which I would have to design myself. Guy Macon 06:54, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

We have a naming policy in our FAQ: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ. See "What should I call my boards?" — Preceding unsigned comment added by DMellis (talk • contribs) 23:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a policy on external links WP:EL. It states that they should be in their own section and that they should be to encyclopedic information that would be included in this article if it were at FA status, but that can not be because it is copyright. In other words, a massive link fest is simply not allowable. 0¹⁸ (talk) 18:42, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think the clone/shield section should be a list of links (actually, it shouldn't be a section in this article, but rather a separate standalone list article). It should be a an annotated standalone list of clones and/or shields, with a short description of what each is and a link to the manufacturer whenever the manufacturer is not notable enough for a Wikipedia page. This conforms to the guidelines at MOS:LIST and WP:STANDALONE (see the examples under "Annotated lists") Guy Macon 20:49, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Version shown in images

I would like to propose that we attempt to keep the images up to date with currently shipping hardware (Uno, as of this writing). They only change every year or two, and I believe that the images on the offcial Arduino website are free to use. Also, an image showing all the versions from the past all in a row would be nice. Perhaps someone on the Arduino team reading this could provide that image? Guy Macon 09:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Dimensions

This being an Italian product, should the dimensions be metric? Perhaps with inches in parenthesis? Guy Macon 12:00, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

mbed?

I just reverted an added entry to mbed in the "see also" section that had links to http://mbed.org/blog/entry/mbed-and-Arduino-shields/ (mbed described as alternative to Arduino) and http://www.circellar.com/archives/viewable/Cantrell-227.pdf

I reverted the addition because of the problems listed below, but I think that mbed would be worth adding to the See Also section if done correctly.

My problem is with the link to the mbed-to-arduino-shield board, which is a link is to something someone saw on twitter that does not appear to be comercially available except as a kit sold only in Japan ( http://www.sugakoubou.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=23&language=en ).

That being said, if someone were to create a mbed Wikipedia page (start at ttp://mbed.org/ ) and link to it from the see also section of the Arduino page, IMO that would be a good thing. Guy Macon 02:09, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Direct links

Section Accessory hardware contains direct links. Shouldn't those be in references instead? --Mortense (talk) 17:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)