If you feel like experimenting with connected objects, a good idea could be to start from a funny project explained step-by-step in a tutorial. In the video below you can follow the instructions given by Dana, Documentation Hero at relayr, using an Arduino Yún, a gas sensor and relayr cloud to make a little Batman-shaped toy dance according to data:

I used a moisture sensor as an input and a servo motor as an output that I can control through a demo web application made using the browser-sdk.

The code in this repository will enable you to use your Arduino to build a prototype of a device and connect it to the relayr platform, much like the one created with the Particle.io Photon. It contains instructions and a demo app which will make your first few steps in the relayr-Arduino prototyping realm easy and fun!

 

Recently we had the opportunity to sit down and interview Arduino SRL’s CEO, [Federico Musto], over a nice dinner. His company is one half of the Arduino vs Arduino debacle which has pitted Arduino.cc against Arduino.org in a battle over the trademark on “Arduino”.

Given the tremendous amount of press coverage of [Massimo Banzi] and the Arduino LLC side of the story (Arduino.cc), we were very interested in hearing how the whole situation looks where [Frederico Musto] sit (Arduino.org). In the end, we came away with what we feel is a more balanced and complete picture of the situation, as well as interesting news about future products from the Arduino SRL camp. [Musto’s] take on the legal proceedings, both past and present, is nothing short of fascinating.

A Quick Refresher

Unless you’ve been sitting under a large chunk of fused silicon, you’ve probably read or heard something about the battle of the two Arduinos. Founder [Massimo Banzi] and the rest of the Arduino crew planned to make an affordable, accessible microcontroller/physical computing platform based on the software project (Wiring) of one of his students, [Hernando Barragán]. In 2004, [Gianluca Martino], one of the Arduino founders, and [Daniela Antonietti], later Arduino LLC CFO, founded Smart Projects SRL and started cranking out Arduino boards. That much of the history of the Arduino is non-controversial.

Money started flowing in, Arduino LLC was founded in the US in 2008, and tensions started building between the software-and-documentation side (Arduino LLC) and the board-building side (Smart Projects SRL). In 2014 Smart Projects (in Italy) changed its name to Arduino SRL, was bought by [Federico Musto], and all heck broke loose, not necessarily in that order.

The Past, According to [Musto]

The central issue of the Arduino schism is who owns the trademark to the “Arduino” brand. In the USA this is currently Arduino LLC, although Arduino SRL filed a petition to invalidate this trademark and this isn’t likely to be resolved until early 2016. (Naturally, Arduino LLC has mounted its own counter-suit in the States.)

In Italy, Switzerland, and probably the rest of the world, the trademark appears to belong to Smart Projects, now Arduino SRL. This is because Smart Projects filed for the trademark in Italy in December 2008, just months after the legal incorporation of Arduino LLC, which only got around to filing in the Spring of 2009. This is, naturally, also being contested in Italian courts by Arduino LLC.

That’s the mess. How did we get in it? Arduino LLC claims that [Gianluca Martino] didn’t inform them of the Italian trademark until it was granted in 2010. Why would one member of the Arduino core team go rogue and trademark the name without telling the others? [Federico Musto]’s telling of the tale makes [Gianluca]’s preemptive trademarking action seem a lot more plausible, if still not entirely above-board.

2008 was the year of the big Arduino breakout. Sales had crossed over 100 boards per day and Smart Projects was having a hard time keeping up with demand. At this point, it started to look like there was real money to be made in Arduino, both for companies with scruples offering Arduino add-on shields, and for companies without scruples selling Arduino-branded knockoffs of the “official” boards. How to handle the clones and make money off of the Arduino brand was on everyone’s mind within the Arduino group, but there was disagreement about just how to do it.

Meanwhile [Gianluca Martino] and [Daniela Antonietti] at Smart Projects had just built out their production line to keep up with demand for the boards. Funding these investments wasn’t easy. Among other sources of money, [Daniela Antonietti] had mortgaged her house to pay for a professional reflow oven. It probably seemed very important to [Martino] and [Antonietti] to safeguard their personal investments in the Arduino project from the waves of unauthorized clones. They took matters into their own hands, allegedly behind [Banzi]’s back, and trademarked “Arduino”.

Substantiating all the details of [Musto]’s version of [Gianluca]’s story is impossible and probably devolves fairly quickly into he-said, she-said and hearsay, so we’ll keep it short here. But anyone who’s worked in a team knows how a single individual can come to dominate a discussion, leaving other parties feeling marginalized and isolated, and we can also understand the temptation to act in defiance.

We can imagine how this feeling must be multiplied if a disproportionate percentage of your investment is in play. [Musto]’s telling of the story is that the financial risk undertaken by the Smart Projects team was under-appreciated by [Banzi], and that [Martino] was acting in the financial equivalent of self-defense as the only production-side interest within the Arduino five and as the CEO of Smart Projects.

Arduino certainly wouldn’t be where it is today if [Martino] and [Antonietti] hadn’t taken the risk to pony up the money and build out the one assembly line that was turning out Arduinos in 2008. The key to Arduino’s success was the merger of firmware and documentation with a hardware-based physical computing platform. Both parts are necessary, but building the hardware required more capital and involved real financial risk.

So is Arduino SRL or Arduino LLC the “real” Arduino? We think both are. Unfortunately, nobody’s asking us; the question is playing out in Italian and US courts.

Laundry List of Lawsuits

Lawsuits have been the order of the day, and it turns out we only knew about the tip of the iceberg. Previously, we’d reported on Arduino SRL’s petition to cancel Arduino LLC’s trademark in the USA and on Arduino LLC’s tit-for-tat suit to cancel Arduino SRL’s trademark in Italy. But [Federico Musto] laid out for us a laundry-list of legal cases that we had no idea about.

When [Musto] bought out [Gianluca Martino]’s share in Arduino LLC as well as the Arduino SRL, he wanted to see the accounting of the companies that he had a 20% stake in. By this time, there was so much bad blood between [Martino] and [Banzi] that according to [Musto], they refused to show him the books. He took both the US Arduino LLC and the Swiss-registered Arduino SA to court and won, in separate cases in the US and Switzerland.

Remember that inclusion of a popup in the Arduino IDE that flagged all Arduino boards made by Arduino LLC as being “unofficial”? Until the various trademark cases get resolved in court, this is possibly libellous. [Musto] told us that Arduino LLC only backed down from this position after Arduino SRL took legal action. (And we gave Arduino LLC credit for backing down off of a bad idea on their own.)

Most recently, Arduino LLC filed an injunction in Italy to prevent Arduino SRL from selling its Arduino boards due to trademark infringement. This was recently denied, and we’ve read the ruling from the court in Turin, Italy. It makes mention of the impossibility of Arduino LLC having controlled the Arduino brand as early as 2005, when Smart Projects was producing the boards under the Arduino name.

We’re not (Italian) lawyers, but the denial of the summary injunction in Italy seems to cast further doubt on Arduino LLC’s ability to prevail in Italy and use the Arduino trademark outside of the US. Hence the pivot to the “Genuino” brand name for sales of Arduino boards outside of the USA.

Overall, [Musto] expressed a bit of dismay at having walked into a full-blown feud when he bought Smart Projects from [Martino], and stressed the defensive nature of many of the lawsuits — responding to being barred from seeing the firms’ books and the IDE popup in particular. On the other hand, Arduino SRL did initiate proceedings against Arduino LLC in the USPTO case, and [Musto] also mentioned that his lawyers don’t like the “Genuino” brand and logo, and may be forced to take action against it.

In short, there have been a number of legal victories for Arduino SRL, but the two biggest cases are still outstanding. Both [Massimo Banzi] and [Federico Musto] have expressed their weariness at the continuing lawsuits, but both sides seem willing to file new ones. Until there’s a final decision reached in both Italy and the USA, we guess they’ll both have to suffer through.

Community Splits and Code Forks

It was also interesting to hear [Musto]’s side of the story behind arduino.org and the IDE’s code fork.

Because of their previous tight cooperation, [Gianluca Martino] and Smart Projects had all used the arduino.cc domain for their e-mail addresses. Arduino LLC, which had control of the domain, cut their e-mail off as in Fall 2014, leaving the entire Smart Projects / Arduino SRL team without business e-mail communications. They had to re-establish a domain and set up e-mail and business presences quickly once it was clear that Arduino LLC was going to try to shut them down. Hence arduino.org.

[Federico Musto] says he regrets the code fork, and wishes that Arduino SRL had just waited it out until the courts had forced Arduino LLC to remove their incendiary popup from the codebase. On the other hand, once Arduino LLC had shown that they were willing to play dirty with the IDE code, it hardly seems like a good idea to couple your livelihood to a (now-)rival firm that seems to be willing to single you out. (None of the truly counterfeit Arduino boards triggered the popup, only those made by Arduino SRL.)

In short, [Musto] explains a lot of the controversial actions on the part of Smart Projects / Arduino SRL as being a reaction to internal disagreements within the Arduino group, and subsequent aggressive actions by Arduino LLC. Contrary to the innocent picture of Arduino LLC painted by [Banzi], it’s clear that there’s been skulduggery on both sides of the aisle.

The Future

Until early 2016, when the USPTO ruling comes down, the two firms are in limbo. Ironically, this hasn’t really affected the end-hacker (read: us) at all. If anything, both firms have been doubling their efforts to sway us with not only their press propaganda, but also with their product and software offerings. How long will this last and what new stuff will the future bring? We asked [Musto] about Arduino SRL’s plans.

An Arduino Foundation?

Given that Arduino SRL and Arduino LLC may not ever settle their differences amicably, what is to become of the Arduino brand? [Musto] suggests a Solomonic solution: take control of “Arduino” out of the hands of any one person or company leave it up to a community-directed foundation.

[Musto] told us that he envisions an “Arduino Foundation” with clear and open balance sheets and a democratic governance structure. Think Mozilla Foundation mashed-up with Debian’s governance. The Foundation would be open to all stakeholders in the Arduino community. [Musto] said that he’s currently in the middle of paperwork, and that there will probably be announcements forthcoming. We discussed how such a foundation could also be used to funnel some money back to the Arduino community, because after all a lot of the success of Arduino is due to the code contributions of users.

New Products, New IDE

[Federico Musto] describes himself as a “software guy” with a penchant for radio frequency hardware. Given the former, he said he’s surprised at how much time they’re spending on new physical product development, but his RF roots certainly show through. His design for what became the Arduino Yún, a Linux WiFi SOC combined with an AVR microcontroller, was [Musto]’s entrée into the Arduino universe, after all.

In this context, we asked [Musto] our $64k question: given that the Yún and similar boards face pressure from products like the ESP8266 from below and the Rasberry Pi from above, what is Arduino SRL’s direction going to be in the future. Bigger or smaller? Or staying in the middle? He replied that they have projects going at each scale.

On the big end of things, we have the Yún and future Linux/microcontroller mashup devices, for which [Musto] and now Arduino SRL, is continuing development of its Linino distribution. Linino is an OpenWRT-based Linux distribution modified to play well with external microcontrollers. Linino’s killer feature, in our estimation, is the MCUIO subsystem, which gives low-level Linux driver access to the associated microcontroller(s) — pins on the micro appear as devices on the Linux filesystem. The marriage of a small embedded Linux with a microcontroller for I/O is clearly an interesting area right now, if only the communications between the two weren’t so difficult. MCUIO aims to change that.

On the smallest end of the spectrum, Arduino SRL is working on a new product line of tiny (think littleBits) interconnected devices, to be programmed using a visual, drag-and-drop interface. They’re also (all?) going to be wireless. This project is still in the beginning stages, but [Musto] suggested that he’d be interested in an early alpha release if folks were interested in developing code for the platform. We can’t wait to see it working.

Uno-plus

And then in the middle of things, [Federico Musto] mentioned that there would be a forthcoming “Uno-plus” board with a yet-to-be-disclosed ARM chip on board coming out in the fall. The goal is essentially a supercharged Arduino form-factor board at a reasonable price.

We talked a lot about WiFi versus sub-GHz radios for IoT projects. Our experience is that the current crop of WiFi devices (the Hackaday-darling ESP8266 included) are power hogs, and not something you can run off batteries. [Musto] mentioned some new WiFi devices he’d seen, that aren’t yet in production, that will significantly help the WiFi power budget when they become available. Arduino SRL is looking to incorporate them into an IoT-style device when possible. Stay tuned.

Hardware aside, both Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL are coming out with new IDEs, and they look a lot better than the previous incarnations. The Arduino SRL version is based on Javascript and Node.js, and uses Adobe’s Brackets editor. In short, it’s all caught up with today’s new hotnesses for web coders, which is probably a good thing. (Finally, code completion!) It’s still in alpha, but you’re welcome to check it out.

Conclusion

The Arduino vs Arduino courtroom drama makes for good popcorn time for us, and it’s undoubtedly nerve-wracking for the twin Arduini and all directly involved. But we’re also glad to see that both companies are continuing to innovate on the hardware and software fronts.

In retrospect, our question of market niche was off-base. Arduino SRL’s focus isn’t on a device scale as much as on the general merging of wireless technologies with microcontrollers, and developing the support software for Linux/microcontroller integration in a wireless context. As far as Arduino LLC’s new product directions seem to be wired and/or wearable, we wonder if there isn’t room in the hacker economy for both firms to flourish despite the trademark woes?

Every year the students of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) attend the Physical Computing class as part of their curriculum.

Having a small delegation of the Arduino team teaching this class has become quite a ritual. This past March Ubi De Feo, Alice Pintus, and Lorenzo Romagnoli runned the two-weeks-long intensive class.

Teaching at CIID is great experience, since you are surrounded by incredibly motivated and curious students, that are doing everything possible to design amazing projects and prototypes.

The topic of this year was prototyping interactive installations for a Science Center that would explain in a playful and engaging way how a technology works. For most of the students this was the first experience with physical computing, but even in such short time they were able to build eight different prototypes. The projects explain in an interactive way the science behind computer viruses, allergies, video compression, machine learning, laser printing, digital music synthesis, binary numbers and neuroprosthetic.

In Explaining laser printing Victoria Hammel, Chelsey Wickmark, Ciaràn Duffy, Feild Craddock demonstrate how the laser printer works. By using 16 servomotors connected to an Arduino UNO to move a matrix of magnets they were able to attract iron filings and draw letters on paper.

In Troyan 77 Karan Chaitanya Mudgal, Liliana Lambriev, Gunes Kantaroglu, Dhruv Saxena visualize the effects of a Trojan Virus harming your computer. Connecting Processing to Arduino they were able to create an overlay projection on top of the maze representative of the effect of the viruses on a computer.

Sound Blocks by John Ferreira, Alejandra Molina and Andreas Refsgaard is an musical instrument that explain how to compose sounds combining multiple soundwaves. The prototype was built using Arduino as a midi controller for Ableton.

Arduino/Genuino team were in China last month to be part of Shenzhen Maker Faire and present to local makers the new Genuino boards, together with Seeedstudio. They  also had the pleasure to meet with Arduino users, teachers, students and makers of all ages with great skills.
Here’s a selection of pictures form those amazing days (all the pictures are on our Flickr).

Thanks to all the people visiting our booth and warmly welcoming us in China!

A few months ago we introduced Genuino, Arduino’s sister brand for products sold outside the US. TODO, the design agency that developed the Arduino branding language since its early beginnings, created the new Genuino look & feel and signature elements. This new branding language is going to be applied to all Genuino and Arduino products in the near future.

Giorgio Olivero, one of TODO co-founder, studied at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where Arduino was conceived. Giorgio and later on his team (among others Vanessa Poli and Alessandro Argenio) have been taking care of Arduino’s brand identity since then. We have asked Giorgio to tell us the reasons behind the original Arduino branding language, and the Arduino/Genuino design language refresh. Here is the story in his own words:

‘When we began developing Arduino’s identity in late 2009 we wanted the project to feature an accessible, pop, and clear communication language for the new community that was growing around DIY electronics. Something that wouldn’t compare to the technical-macho look of the engineer-oriented platforms and products: a testosterone-free positioning that could speak to everyone and not only to experts and hard-core enthusiasts.

Arduino’s original visual language had to stand out and define a yet uncharted market, its goal was to ‘declare, define, simplify’ without scaring people away with overly technical details. Arduino’s identity had to be true to its community values, not too polished but still elegant and accessible. It was basic, technical and playful. The message was: Arduino is a modular system open to anybody and in constant evolution.

As the electronics market keeps evolving at an incredible rate, it’s about time to refresh both the Arduino and the Genuino brand with an updated system. The new design keeps a strong continuity with the previous one, we see it as an evolution rather than a revolution. We want people to recognize that the core values and the ‘personality’ haven’t changed. The new recipe is spicier and less technical though, it has a sort of circus-like feeling: it’s about the joyful interplay of the Arduino ecosystem and community. You could see these colourful squares as different components, circuits, and modules of an electronics system. Or rather as the interlocking building blocks of the maker movement itself, that recipe of openness that makes Arduino so unique.

The new visual language evokes empathy, joy, and playfulness. Collaboration is its core value. It introduces a series of characters based on the electronics components with a playful personality, that will enable new outlets for the visual identity.

We have always enjoyed working with Arduino, our ongoing collaborations (and long friendship) surely requires very fast design iterations, because the Arduino ecosystem keeps evolving, but hopefully we are making the brand stronger and very well equipped for the new challenges ahead.’

Learn more about Todo on Twitter and Facebook.

If you are a fan of cosplay, props and hand built creations you can’t miss the work of  James Bruton. Based in Uk he’s got a personal project YouTube channel with a new video every week describing his work in details. At the end of June he posted the 34th “episode” of the project started nearly a year ago about  building an Iron Man Hulkbuster giant suit you can actually wear!

In the video below you can follow how he’s sorting out the arm mechatronics for the elbow, hand and cuff weapon with some 3D printing with Lulzbot and controlling the interaction with  Arduino Uno (electronic part starting around minute 10):

Explore the playlist of the project for other cool videos.

Dimitri Platis is a software engineer who’s been working with his team on an Android-based self-driving vehicle which uses machine vision algorithms and techniques as well as data from the on-board sensors, in order to follow street lanes, perform parking manoeuvres and overtake obstacles blocking its path:

The innovational aspect of this project, is first and foremost the use of an Android phone as the unit which realizes the image processing and decision making. It is responsible for wirelessly transmitting instructions to an Arduino Mega, that controls the physical aspects of the vehicle. Secondly, the various hardware components (i.e. sensors, motors etc) are programmatically handled in an object oriented way, using a custom made Arduino library, which enables developers without background in embedded systems to trivially accomplish their tasks, not caring about lower level implementation details.

[...]

On the software dimension of the physical layer, an Arduino library was created (based on a previous work of mine [1], [2]) which encapsulated the usage of the various sensors and permits us to handle them in an object oriented manner. The API, sports a high abstraction level, targeting primarily novice users who “just want to get the job done”. The components exposed, should however also be enough for more intricate user goals. The library is not yet 100% ready to be deployed out of the box in different hardware platforms, as it was built for an in house system after all, however with minor modifications that should not be a difficult task. This library was developed to be used with the following components in mind: an ESC, a servo motor for steering, HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensors, SHARP GP2D120 infrared distance sensors, an L3G4200D gyroscope, a speed encoder, a Razor IMU. Finally, you can find the sketch running on the actual vehicle here. Keep in mind that all decision making is done in the mobile device, therefore the microcontroller’s responsibility is just to fetch commands, encoded as Netstrings and execute them, while fetching sensor data and transmitting them.

 

Check the Arduino library on Github, explore the circuit below and enjoy the car in the video:

Here’s the essential bill of materials:

• Electronic Speed Controller (ESC)
• Servo motor (Steering wheel)
• Speed encoder
• Ultrasonic sensors (HC-SR04, SRF05)
• Infrared distance sensors (SHARP GP2D120)
• Gyroscope (L3G4200D)
• 9DOF IMU (Razor IMU)

Arduino user named Muiota shared with us an experimental DIY music project running on Arduino Uno and  solenoids.

Take a look at the video to hear how it sounds:

Mike Szczys of Hackaday met Massimo Banzi at Maker Faire Shenzhen and interviewed him about manufacturing Genuino in China, the current and future of Arduino, and how recent events may shape the Open Hardware landscape.

Enjoy the video:

Luz Electoral is an installation with the aim of showing the results of Spanish regional elections of May 24th 2015 without using a screen to display data (self-imposed requirement ;). This project, created by Neuronas Muertas,  shows the percentage of votes by lighting a strip of 33 Neopixels with the main color of each party for each region, scrolling the results in some kind of “electoral results mood light”. It basically transforms Spanish poll results into a lightshow running on Arduino, where each political party is represented by colors scrolling on a bar.

If you want to make it,  take a look at  the code available on Github and check the full story in spanish on Medium.