A few months have passed from the launch of the internal betatesting of Arduino Create. We are finally ready to open up the number of people who can use and experiment with this online platform. Today each betatester currently in the program has received 5 invites to get other Arduino tinkerers on board, we have also added about 100 people who tried the platform during Maker Faires and other events, or expressed interest online.

Most importantly we have a public waiting list for anyone who wants to try Arduino Create before hand and give us feedback.
You can SIGN UP here, the first 100 people will receive an invite right away, we will add the other subscribers as the betatesting unfolds.

What’s new?

The Arduino Create Editor has most of the Arduino Desktop IDE features, it is a fully functional Editor, and you can start developing your projects on it right away. We are really close on having everything delivered in HTTPS, we are working hard to add the Library Manager and support for all the Certified and AtHeart boards. Next in our roadmap is including a Sharing feature and a Chrome OS plugin.
As already said in the past, we are always going to provide our community with a offline solution, so don’t worry

When you use Arduino Create for the first time you will be prompted to install a plugin (agent). While your Sketchbook and the apps are hosted in the Cloud, the plugin will locally check the USB ports on your computer. The plugin detects if any board has been connected, if you are uploading a sketch, or you are using the Serial Monitor. The Arduino Create agent is open-source, and available for Mac, Windows and Linux! If you find it interesting you can contribute to it or fork it to use it in your projects.

We are currently working on a brand-new tutorial platform, Arduino Create Projects, in collaboration with Hackster.io. We are planning to release it at the beginning of 2016. Arduino users will finally have a place where they can share their own projects and include step by step guides, schematics and layout references, pictures, videos, the code they wrote, and useful links and comments. We can’t wait to share it with you all so stay tuned!

Today we are very proud to release Arduino IDE 1.6.6 and updated cores for all supported platforms (AVR 1.6.9, SAM 1.6.5, SAMD 1.6.2)

This update brings an impressive 723 closed issues and 147 pull requests merged.

Most intriguing features are:

• Long-awaited new arduino-builder: this is a pure command-line tool which takes care of mangling the code, resolving library dependencies and setting up the compilation units. It can also be used as a standalone program in a continuous-integration environment
• Pluggable USB core: your Arduino can finally act as a lot of different USB devices without any need to change the core, thanks to the new modular architecture. Libraries based on the new subsystem are already being developed!
• Serial plotter: you can now plot your data in realtime, as easy as writing Serial.println(analogRead(A0)) inside your loop

• New goodies for library developers, like unlocked examples while developing and optional linkage into an archive
• ArduinoISP example has been improved a lot and now you can flash your AVR chip using ANY other board (including third-party ones )
• Both Libraries and Boards managers notify if a library/core can be updated with a simple popup – no more outdated code floating around!
• A LOT of bug fixes, adjustments, documentation refinement thanks to our tireless users and contributors. The complete list of fixes and credits is available here.

Don’t forget to report any issue you find, either on Github or on the Arduino forum: your help is very much appreciated. It doesn’t matter if you are not a tech specialist: every feedback adds value.

Happy coding!

Chad Herbert’s son Daniel was diagnosed with Benign Rolandic Epilepsy in 2014. It’s a type of epilepsy the Epilepsy Foundation says accounts for about 15 percent of all Epilepsies in children and the good news is that most children grow out of it.

The bad news is that Daniel’s most affected by his condition at night or early morning while he sleeps. That’s why Chad invested in a sleep monitor/alarm for his bed that detects when he’s having a full tonic-clonic seizure.

At the same time though, he decided to work on a DIY version of a seizure alarm  running on Arduino Micro. The starting point was Arduino’s “Knock” example project with the sketch code originally created in 2007 by David Cuartielles and modified by Tom Igoe in 2011:

While shopping around for the exact type of monitor/alarm my wife and I wanted, I found out a few things:

• They are hard to find. I believe the one we ended up with was manufactured by a company in Great Britain.
• They are expensive. The one we ended up getting cost in the $400-$500 range.
• The one we have isn’t totally cumbersome, but it’s not easy to pack up and take with you somewhere.

Figuring these things out, I decided to search for a way to build a simple seizure alam that’s both relatively inexpensive and easy to transport. I’m sure there are people out there who have children that suffer from seizures that simply cannot afford equipment such as this even though they truly need it. Thanks to the folks in the Arduino community, I was able to accomplish both things I was setting out to do.

Discover how it was made on his blog.

Today, June 20th, 2015, Massimo Banzi, Co-founder of Arduino, and Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seeedstudio announced at Maker Faire Shenzhen 2015 a strategic partnership between Arduino LLC and Seeedstudio.

Seeedstudio will manufacture and distribute Arduino LLC products using the new Genuino brand in China and other Asian markets.

The new Genuino name certifies the authenticity of boards, in line with the open hardware and open source philosophy that has always characterized Arduino. Genuino is Arduino LLC new sister-brand created by co-founders Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe and David Mellis for markets outside of the USA.

“We are very excited to partner with SeeedStudio to manufacture our products in China. We’ve known and appreciated Seeed for years, we share the same values and I think they are one of the most forward looking companies in China” said Massimo Banzi.

And he also explained about Genuino: “Arduino is very popular in China but the brand is used heavily without permission. Genuino allows the market to clearly identify which products are contributing to the Open Source Hardware process. With Genuino, the Arduino.cc community will easily be able to recognize the partners who are contributing to support the development of the platform.”

Eric Pan, founder of Seeedstudio, explained: “Arduino is becoming a global language of making, we are proud to help provide Genuino branded localized products to carry on the conversation in China. Here we already have a huge Arduino user base and growing, it’s time to get us involved deeper with global ecosystem. “

Genuino-branded products will be sold on Seeed’s store on Taobao and soon on http://www.genuino.cc.

The partnership between Arduino LLC and Seeedstudio is a bold new step of a global development plan by Arduino LLC. Arduino LLC has recently launched the Genuino brand and is already working with market-leading, innovative manufacturers/distributors in Asia, Europe, South America, Canada and Africa.

Today, June 20th, 2015, Massimo Banzi, Co-founder of Arduino, and Eric Pan, founder and CEO of Seeedstudio announced at Maker Faire Shenzhen 2015 a strategic partnership between Arduino LLC and Seeedstudio.

Seeedstudio will manufacture and distribute Arduino LLC products using the new Genuino brand in China and other Asian markets.

The new Genuino name certifies the authenticity of boards, in line with the open hardware and open source philosophy that has always characterized Arduino. Genuino is Arduino LLC new sister-brand created by co-founders Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe and David Mellis for markets outside of the USA.

“We are very excited to partner with SeeedStudio to manufacture our products in China. We’ve known and appreciated Seeed for years, we share the same values and I think they are one of the most forward looking companies in China” said Massimo Banzi.

And he also explained about Genuino: “Arduino is very popular in China but the brand is used heavily without permission. Genuino allows the market to clearly identify which products are contributing to the Open Source Hardware process. With Genuino, the Arduino.cc community will easily be able to recognize the partners who are contributing to support the development of the platform.”

Eric Pan, founder of Seeedstudio, explained: “Arduino is becoming a global language of making, we are proud to help provide Genuino branded localized products to carry on the conversation in China. Here we already have a huge Arduino user base and growing, it’s time to get us involved deeper with global ecosystem. “

Genuino-branded products will be sold on Seeed’s store on Taobao and soon on http://www.genuino.cc.

The partnership between Arduino LLC and Seeedstudio is a bold new step of a global development plan by Arduino LLC. Arduino LLC has recently launched the Genuino brand and is already working with market-leading, innovative manufacturers/distributors in Asia, Europe, South America, Canada and Africa.

Last month Massimo Banzi gave a lecture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (California, US). It was titled The Arduino Experience and covered the historical origins of Arduino, including a explanation of the process of designing tools which make digital technology accessible to people who are not experts, and the essential role of the larger Arduino ecosystem that supports it. After the keynote Len Shustek, chairman of the board of the Museum, curated a session of Q&A. If you didn’t have the chance to be there, the recorded video is online and you can watch it now:

Last month Massimo Banzi gave a lecture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View (California, US). It was titled The Arduino Experience and covered the historical origins of Arduino, including a explanation of the process of designing tools which make digital technology accessible to people who are not experts, and the essential role of the larger Arduino ecosystem that supports it. After the keynote Len Shustek, chairman of the board of the Museum, curated a session of Q&A. If you didn’t have the chance to be there, the recorded video is online and you can watch it now:

The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) is seeking feedback on a proposal for the certification of open-source hardware. The certification would provide a more formal means of verifying the compliance of a particular project or organization with the practices of open-source hardware, as understood by the community. There are, however, many different ways in which such a certification process could work, e.g. whether it should include a single standard for open-source hardware or recognize multiple levels of openness; whether people should be able to self-certify or if OSHWA would need to pre-approve certifications; etc. OSHWA is seeking feedback from the broader open-source hardware community in order to help refine the certification proposal.

You can see the full proposal here and provide feedback on the OSHWA forums.

The Open Hardware Summit 2015 will be held September 19th in Philadelphia, PA (USA). This event brings together the open hardware community for a day of talks on all aspects of open-source hardware. It’s an inspiring event and a great chance to connect with other open hardware practitioners. The summit is organized by the Open Source Hardware Association.

If you’d like to speak at the Summit, check out the call for submissions. You have until July 2nd to submit your proposal. Decisions on the schedule will be made by July 31st.

You can get your tickets for the Summit. Past years have sold out, so you may want to get them early.

If you’d like to sponsor the Summit, see the sponsorship details.

The Open Hardware Summit 2015 will be held September 19th in Philadelphia, PA (USA). This event brings together the open hardware community for a day of talks on all aspects of open-source hardware. It’s an inspiring event and a great chance to connect with other open hardware practitioners. The summit is organized by the Open Source Hardware Association.

If you’d like to speak at the Summit, check out the call for submissions. You have until July 2nd to submit your proposal. Decisions on the schedule will be made by July 31st.

You can get your tickets for the Summit. Past years have sold out, so you may want to get them early.

If you’d like to sponsor the Summit, see the sponsorship details.