Maker Faire Rome is over, and that means it’s time for the Arduino media blitz. Arduino has already had a big announcement this week with the introduction of the Arduino / Genuino 101 board powered by the Intel Curie module. Team .cc hasn’t forgotten all their Atmel-powered boards though. The latest news is that Arduinos will be manufactured in Germany by Watterott Electronics (.de, Google Translate).
Right now, Arduino.cc boards are manufactured in China by Seeed, and in the US by Adafruit and Sparkfun. Watterott Electronics is one of the premier hobby electronics distributors in Germany.
Boards made by Watterott will carry the Genuino mark; Arduino.cc seems to anticipate a loss in the Arduino vs. Arduino trademark dispute outside the US. All boards produced under license from Arduino.cc sold outside the US will carry the Genuino trademark, whereas boards produced for the US market will carry the Arduino trademark. Interestingly, this Arduino vs. Arduino split began with a former manufacturer, with a maelstrom of pettiness stemming from that trademark dispute. In any case, the licensing for boards manufactured by Watterott is most assuredly worked out by now. The new manufacturing partner guarantees a greater supply of Arduinos for all.
Thanks for the heads-up HAD, I’ll be telling my boss where to buy all our Genuino boards from now on.
Arduino is like toilet seat. Sure, It’s nice and cosy but you can do number 1&2 without it.
I do like cozy toilet seats. Why be uncomfortable when you don’t have to be?
That’s one toilet seat you don’t want to pee on!
? If your good with usb you dont need an arduino – cause they basicly do the same thing?
I don’t hear anything about the competing arduino.org. Are they being blacked out by maker blogs in the US, or are they just not doing anything newsworthy?
(Yeah, I know most makers consider arduino.org the “bad guys”. I don’t have a dog in that fight; I’m just curious why I don’t hear anything about them.)
So Arduino.cc are the ones that make and manage the opensource software and host the community forums aka the good guys, rather than the fab house in Italy that assembled some of the official boards.
The really only good guys, for the real makers, are those you find on Ali and the like selling and shipping arduinos for 4$ or less
Lol! Some producers have even an improved version of the originals. Anyway i’m a great fan of the arduino.cc , i donate everytime they release a meaningful improvement to the ide :)
The provided link is an old news on Genuino. The announcement concerning Watterrot is here: http://www.golem.de/news/genuino-offizielle-arduinos-jetzt-auch-aus-deutschland-und-italien-1510-116929.html
Arduino.cc is losing my support if they actually go through with the Arduino 101. An UNO successor with 3.3 volt GPIO and a max of 4mA of current per pin? That’s just stupid. It’s going to make half of the existing shields unusable and invalidate countless hours of information people have dedicated time to putting on the internet and in books. With only 4mA of current even super simple circuits are now going to require additional components. And now Intel of all companies is in the mix and unlike the ATmega, their chip does not appear to be user replaceable. The UNO is supposed to be beginner friendly. The 101 certainly isn’t.
I’m sorta surprised that the 5V standard has managed to hang on for as long as it has. As it stands most of the component’s I’ve been ordering have required 3.3v and either needed an external logic level converter to deal with 5V systems or had one built onto their breakout. So in the long run it should (but probably won’t) mean that component breakouts and shields should be nominally cheaper.
I would need to look into the chip more before I could really make any calls on the current it can source. However micro controllers tend to be able to sink better than they source (not always the case and not always desirable) but the answer there might be as simple as setting circuits up to be active low instead of active high. Tho it has been a small forever and I reserve the right to be wrong, so who knows maybe it will ultimately require more components :P
I do know that I really do like Atmel hardware so if I’m going to change to another platform it is probably going to be a radical change not just something kinda similar with a familiar form factor.
Yeah 5 volts can be a pain. But at the same time it is one of the things I like most about the Arduino. Pretty much all my other micro controllers are 3.3 volt and 1.8(adc) volts. For some things I just prefer to use 5 volts and I don’t want to have use additional components. Plus I find it much easier to teach/learn using 5 volts and having the Arduino use the same voltage as USB is very convenient for beginners. Granted I’m not a digital electronics teacher and I’m not just learning to use the Arduino/micro-controllers, so maybe it’s just me. I don’t always like change. :/
Good point on the sink current. I had assumed it would also be 4mA but that could be incorrect.
I agree
That board is a throw away board with the cpu being a BGA device. And yeah it’s anemic with 4ma per pin. Can you say “lots of additional components” to drive lots of things?
That’s another strike against it.
The other it’s a SOC – and as complex as the Raspberry minus the GPU. Boiled down it’s another stinking x86 microprocessor turned into a microcontroller and not even a good one.
Beginners should stick with the Uno or something similar. If you want 32 bit power and more memory go with a Due or Pinguino that uses the PIC32 in a 28 PDIP package.
But not this piece of junk.
From the picture, it looks like the I/Os are buffered and the exact limits will depend on what buffer they’re using.
Great! So long as they are making old shields unusable then it’s time to get rid of the funny pin spacing!!!!!!! These things should work on breadboards damnit!
Thanks for the heads up.
Though the quoted article (golem.de) doesn’t mention any of this. Also Watterott and Arduino.cc don’t seem to have published official news (on their blogs) yet as well.
What is the difference from Arduino 101 and Arduino Industrial 101!?