Make Magazine published a short report of the panel taking place at the Hardware Innovation Workshop, yesterday in New York City. Massimo Banzi and Jason Kridner, co-founder of BeagleBoard, were on the stage talking about the evolution of microcontrollers:

Makers love to develop on their favorite microcontrollers. The creators behind two of the most popular took boards the stage at the New York Hardware Innovation Workshop (HIW) in a panel moderated by MAKE’s own Matt Richardson. Although makers might like to argue about which is the best platform, there was plenty of common ground for these two panelists.

Massimo Banzi, Co-Founder of the Arduino Project, began the session with a short discussion on how and why Arduino got started.

“Every time you design a system to do everything, you end up with a system designed to do nothing,” Massimo says. “The challenge is to build a platform that solves a simple problem for a specific group of people: beginners for example.”

Keep reading  the article on Make.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Thursday, September 19th, 2013 and is filed under events, Hardware.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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As announced a few days ago, the newest addition to the Arduino family, the Arduino Yún, will be available starting September 10. This is the first in a series of posts that will describe some of the Yún’s unique features. Today, we’ll focus on the hardware.

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The Yún is unique in the Arduino lineup, as it has a lightweight Linux distribution to complement the traditional microcontroller interface. It also has WiFi and Ethernet connections on board, enabling it to communicate with networks out of the box. The Yún’s Linux and Arduino processors communicate through the Bridge library, allowing Arduino sketches to send commands to the command line interface of Linux.

Introduction
The Arduino Yún has the same footprint as an Arduino Uno but combines an ATmega32U4 microcontroller (the same as the Leonardo) and a Linux system based on the Atheros AR9331 chipset. Additionally, there are built-in Ethernet and WiFi capabilities. The combination of the classic Arduino programming experience and advanced internet capabilities afforded by a Linux system make the Yún a powerful tool for communicating with the internet of things.

The Yún’s layout keeps the I/O pins the same as the Arduino Leonardo. As such, the Yún is compatible with the most shields designed for Arduino.

With the Yún’s auto-discovery system, your computer can recognize boards connected to the same network. This enables you to upload sketches wirelessly to the Yún. You can still upload sketches to the Yún through the micro-USB connector just as you would with the Leonardo.

Connectivity
The Yún has two separate network interfaces, a 10/100 Mbit/s Fast Ethernet port and a IEEE 802.11 b/g/n standard compliant 2.4GHz WiFi interface, supporting WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption. The WiFi interface can also operate as an access point (AP). In AP mode any WiFi enabled device can connect directly to the network created on the Yún. While a Yún in this mode can’t connect to the internet, it could act as a hub for a group of WiFi enabled sensors.

Historically, interfacing Arduino with web services has been challenging due to memory restrictions. The Yun’s Linux environment simplifies the means to access internet services by using many if the same tools you would use on your computer. You can run several applications as complex as you need, without stressing the ATmega microcontroller.

To help you develop applications that can connect to popular web services, we have partnered with Temboo, a service that simplifies accessing hundreds of the web’s most popular APIs. A Temboo library comes with the Yún, making it easy to connect to a large variety of online tools. Check out their website for the full list of services they offer.

Connection between the two processors
The Yún’s Bridge library enables communication between the two processors, connecting the hardware serial port of the AR9331 to Serial1 on the 32U4 (digital pins 0 & 1). Another post will describe the library in greater depth. The serial port of the AR9331 exposes the Linux console (aka, the command line interface, or CLI) for communication with the 32U4. The console is a means for the Linux kernel and other processes to output messages to the user and receive input from the user. File and system management tools are installed by default. It’s also possible to install and run your own applications using Bridge.

The ATmega32U4 can be programmed from the AR9331 by uploading a sketch through the Yún’s WiFi interface. When connected to the same WiFi network as your computer, the board will appear under the “Port” menu of the Arduino IDE. The sketch will be transferred to the AR9331, and the Linux distribution will program the ATmega32U4 through the SPI bus, emulating an AVR ISP programmer.

Power consideration
The Yún can be powered through the micro-USB connector, the Vin pin, or the optional Power Over Ethernet (POE) module. When powering the board though the Vin pin, you must supply a regulated 5VDC. There is no on-board voltage regulator for higher voltages.

Linux OS specifications
The Yún runs a version of the OpenWRT Linux distribution called Linino. The on-board 16MB flash memory that contains the Linux image has a full python installation and package manager you can use to install additional software.
The AR9331 has 64 MB of DDR2 RAM available, providing the resources to perform complex tasks like running a web server or streaming video from a webcam.
You can expand the storage memory by adding a micro-SD card or a USB pen drive. By including a directory named “arduino” at the root level of the storage device, it will be automatically recognized by the Yún.

USB Host
The Yún has a USB host port connected to the AR9331. You can connect USB peripherals like webcams, memory sticks, or joypads to this input. Generally, Linux has drivers included for the more common devices like mass storage or mice and keyboards. For more specific devices like webcams, you will need to refer to the device specifications to find the appropriate driver. As the USB port is connected to the Linux processor, it’s not directly accessible from sketches on the 32U4.

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The next post about the Yún will focus on the Bridge library, describing how it facilitates communication between the two processors. Stay tuned!

This entry was postedby Federico Vanzati on Monday, September 2nd, 2013 and is filed under arduino, Hardware, Review, Yún.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Some people call it the “Etsy for hardware”, some other “the indie marketplace for open source hardware”, even if being open is not a requirement. Tindie’s mission consists of connecting the world’s small, hardware businesses with customers all over the world and today starts a cool initiative called Open Designs and Kickbacks. When sellers create a new product, they will be able to select a project the product is a derivative from, and enter the % of sales that will go to the open hardware project.

“Businesses can manufacture the open design as is, or create products derived from it. Those sellers can then kickback a portion of their sales back to the designer. Tindie will handle the disbursement of funds so it’s absolutely painless. For designers, there are no fees, no hosting costs, just a simple way to reap the benefits of their hard work”

Some weeks ago Arduino announced in a blogpost about donating every year to projects which are part of the open source ecosystem because we are grateful to these efforts and want to support them and now we are happy to announce of being Tindie’s first partner in the Open Designs’ initiative.   Businesses that have built on top of Arduino boards can now send a portion of their sales back to Arduino, and help us further growing our efforts in supporting the open source community. Take a look at the products derived from Arduino.

For more info and insights, take a look at the Tindie’s website.

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, July 31st, 2013 and is filed under Announcements, arduino, Open Source.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Catarina Mota and I put together an updated version of the annual Open Source Hardware Community Survey for the Open-Source Hardware Association (OSHWA). Here’s a summary:

Our goal is to arrive at a better understanding of who we are as a community, why and how we use/make open-source hardware, and how our practices and numbers are changing over time. For this purpose, we are asking all those who use and/or develop open-source hardware to please respond. The aggregate results will be made publicly available after the survey closes. By publishing your responses, we hope to provide the public with insights into the practices and experiences of the people involved in open-source hardware.

Please help us understand the open-source hardware community by taking the survey.

You can also check out last year’s results.

This entry was postedby mellis on Monday, July 29th, 2013 and is filed under Community, Open Source.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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The Open Source Hardware Association invites submissions for the fourth annual Open Hardware Summit, to be held September 6, 2013 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Open Hardware Summit is the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware; a venue to discuss and draw attention to the rapidly growing Open Source Hardware movement. The Open Hardware Summit is a venue to present, discuss, and learn about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, law, and education.

They are seeking proposals for talks, posters, and demos from individuals and groups working with open hardware and related areas.  Submissions are due by JUNE 21, 2013. Please see the complete call for papers for additional details.

Topics of interest for the summit include, but are not limited to:

Digital fabrication

Means of supporting collaboration and community interaction

Open source business and legal models

Manufacturing models

Open Source Hardware Licenses

Software/Hardware

Sustainability

Communities of Practice

Other topics related to the intersection openness and hardware

This entry was postedby Zoe Romano on Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 and is filed under Announcements, events, Hardware, Open Source.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Last week-end we just had a good time at the Maker Faire of Shenzen, hosted in the wonderful OCT District.

We were invited by Eric Pan from Seeedstudio (thanks Eric for the good time!). The Maker Faire has been a priceless experience to get in touch with the chinese maker community, as well as networking with different Chinese and Chinese-based maker companies creating interesting contents & products.

We finally inaugurated our very first official Weibo account, and shared chinese materials about Arduino. You could come and play with the Esplora as well as code your very own interface, Thanks to our friend Federico Musto and Anna Kao for the help. and Maling and Terry who volunteered for us in the booth giving Arduino goodies and pins to a ton of interested chinese makers and curious. Zack Smith, working now in the HAXLR8R, joined us for some help to test his chinese language. There has been many speeches and presentations (as well as an Arduino workshop held by Guo Haoyun, the chinese translator of Getting Started With Arduino), and all of a sudden I understood I have to learn chinese (!).

The guys of Haxlr8r showed us their cool creations: Haxlr8r is a startup incubator taking cool ideas and startups from around the world and helping them developing and fine tuning their own product (solve all the puzzles in developing a project, 3 to 6 month) for production here in China. They are based closed to the world famous SEG Electronics Market, widely portrayed from Bunnie Wang in this post and from Evil Mad Scientist here.

On Sunday (totally drained out from the previous day) we teamed up with the Trasfabric “Hacked Better” workshop, we visited Chaihuo Makerspace in OCT where Tom Igoe, Zack Hoeken Smith, Gao Lei, Eric Pan (Seeedstudio) talked about maker movement and DIY culture in China, with Silvia Lindtner (ISTC & Fudan University) and Anna Greenspan (NYU Shanghai), organizers of the workshop.

I had the cool opportunity to sit back and listen to many interesting facts and odd metaphors, joining the informal panel. The main idea which came out is looking at the city of Shenzen like the place to be for producing (open) hardware right now, perfectly represented in a cool metaphor of Eric:

Shenzen is the Hollywood of hardware products, where big companies are just like the big Majors: that’s where independent, low-budget movies come out. (movies = products, boards).

Zack and Eric, as well as Tom, talked about the the value of Brand, both as Market Identity and Responsibility. Zack: It looks a bit like a recipe. Hambuger. Everybody makes an hamburger. You can go to McDonald / Burger King or in the finest place. You can make it yourself. What are you hungry for? Basically open sour(c)e hardware can get everybody be the very personal cook of themselves, or at least acknowledges, with different tools and know-hows, the audience (maker movement, kids, any of us).

What are you hungry for?

P.S. please keep an eye on the Transfabric blog to a more comprehensive and less informal sum-up of the workshop, I’m just the one who loves Cinema, Hamburger and Open Source Hardware.

This entry was postedby Davide Gomba on Thursday, April 11th, 2013 and is filed under Education, events, Exhibition, Open Source, Opinion, press.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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