Page 33 - EE Times Europe Magazine | March 2020

EE|Times EUROPE 33

Arduino’s Violante on Open-Source Hardware in the IoT Era

EETE: How did you come up with the generating the same executables as the Uno R3 — our USB identifiers, etc.
Arduino shield? Its shape could be official IDE. In most cases, while we have a lot of col-
replaced by the MKR. There is also an online version of the IDE, laboration on the software side, we see very
Violante: The answer is very simple: We mis- create.arduino.cc, available for people who like limited contribution back on the open-source
placed the connectors by accident, and this to develop in the cloud. It has already proved hardware designs. At Arduino, we try to con-
made it impossible for people to easily use to be very popular and successful, with more tribute a lot to existing projects. In the near
the board on breadboards, but we had a huge than 1.3 million users to date. future, we will be partnering with a number of
batch of boards already manufactured. More other organizations to support the develop-
importantly, though, I would like to highlight EETE: Do you have any special ment of the most complex projects and will
that the objective for the Arduino Uno board collaborations planned? Other IoT provide more visibility to the ones we deem
was to use the least amount of parts needed boards? Artificial intelligence? Is anyone important for the community.
to make something useful, in contrast with thinking of acquiring Arduino? As a final remark, I do believe that very
development boards of that time that tended Violante: Sure, we are strengthening our likely combinations of SaaS [software as a ser-
to be large, expensive, full of parts, and very technology partnerships with vendors of vice] and hardware revenue models will help
complicated. advanced technologies with the aim of sustain the open-source hardware companies.
In order to make the board expandable, we democratizing access to sophisticated tech-
came up with this idea of stackable modules, nology. We are going to make some important EETE: What do you recommend to those
which would be easy to plug even for a begin- announcements in the forthcoming quarters. who want to start an Arduino-driven
ner. The combination of Arduino-plus-shields Of course, Arduino is a popular platform, startup?
enabled a lot of people to build applications and we continuously receive interest from Violante: Go for it! Of course, we encourage
quite quickly. This created an ecosystem different companies and financial investors. people when building their startups to keep
of hundreds of manufacturers. The name leveraging Arduino as a prototyping tool,
“shield” was jokingly invented by [Arduino EETE: We know the difference with as a production tool, and eventually as an
co-founder] David Cuartielles, starting from Raspberry Pi. Are you planning to create enabling IoT cloud.
the fact that Arduino was the first king of Italy a similar board but with an Arduino OS, I would suggest that startup [players] in
in the year 1000, so these modules would be for example? What features of Raspberry this field carefully evaluate the challenges
the king’s shields. Pi do you like and don’t like? related to starting a manufacturing business
When the amount of Uno pins became a Violante: Raspberry Pi had a tremendous from scratch. It can be very exciting but also
limiting factor, we introduced an additional impact on the world by making a powerful quite daunting. As a possible alternative,
connector on the Due/Mega form factor, microprocessor available at a really low price. we see a lot of startups embracing Arduino
and that is still a very widespread solution. In this area, we really appreciate what they especially in areas where they have some val-
As size constraints became an important have done. We have a good relationship with ue-added innovation in software, algorithms,
consideration, many of our users were asking them and have even embedded a Raspberry and business models but they don’t want
for a smaller form factor. We came out with Pi into the Arduino Pro LoRa Gateway. As to become experts in hardware. They tend
the MKR family, which is more compact and Arduino, we tend to stay close to the micro- to build products based on combinations of
introduces the concept of built-in communi- controller world for the execution of real-time tried and tested Arduino modules plus a small
cation modules. tasks, and we are evaluating multicore tech- percentage of custom hardware. This gives a
With the Portenta form factor, we’re nologies combining MPUs and MCUs that will much faster time to market, which is what a
evolving on from the MKR by adding two enable the best of both worlds, with emphasis startup needs to achieve momentum.
high-density connectors. These will ease on low power and industrial-readiness.
usage in industrial applications, in which But we are not planning by any means to EETE: I’d like your opinion on the impact
the board needs to be used as a module, by enter the low-cost Raspberry Pi space, where of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak,
hosting as many as 160 pins to facilitate a we recognize they have done a great job and which has disrupted the Chinese market.
multitude of interfaces for the user. they are continuing to democratize the access What is the impact on the electronics
to powerful general-purpose Linux-based market, as China is a key market for
EETE: What are the programs for the computers. global manufacturing?
Arduino integrated development Violante: At this point, we haven’t seen any
environment [IDE]? EETE: Can you envision the state of open- tangible impact from the coronavirus on our
Violante: While we are committed to main- source hardware in 20 years? supply chain. Like the majority of companies
taining and improving the traditional Java Violante: I think open source is a great way in the electronics world, we depend on com-
Arduino IDE, we recently started the devel- to foster innovation, freedom, and creativity. ponents that, in many cases, are supplied by
opment of a more advanced environment As far as the business models are concerned, Chinese factories; hence, we may expect some
called the Arduino Pro IDE. Many users over for sure, there will be some adjustments in shortages in the future. We have received
the years have manifested their desire to have the future because there is a bit of imbalance some advisory notes from distributors in the
advanced editing features like auto-comple- between people like us who spend a lot of supply chain about potential minor slow-
tion of code and debugging capabilities. The time and energy designing the core technol- downs in supply, but we believe they will not
new Pro IDE is now available and can ogies, writing tons of lines of code, firmware substantially affect our ability to deliver.
be downloaded and alpha tested from the and libraries, and people who just take our We continue monitoring the situation, and
arduino.cc website. designs and code, clone it as it is, and then we are putting in place some countermeasures
Listening to the users’ feedback, we created release a cheaper product on the market. to mitigate the effects. ■
a CLI [command line interface] tool that In many cases, [those products] violate our
implements all the “back end” functions trademarks — for example, you cannot call a Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio is a staff
of the Arduino IDE so that people can use clone product Arduino Uno R3, even though correspondent at AspenCore, editor of Power
whatever editor they like while effortlessly you can build a legal clone identical to our Electronics News, and editor-in-chief of EEWeb.

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