

Arduino 1.0 now available - jipumarino
http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/11/30/arduino-1-0-now-available/

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ChuckMcM
This has been interesting to watch, from the Summer of 2007 when the Dicemelia
was released (that was my first exposure to Arduino) until the 1.0 release
today, its come a long way.

Perhaps one of the more interesting things for me is that the open source
nature of the hardware has allowed a number of new businesses to flourish and
grow and innovate. This lesson has been too often lost in the rent-seeking
behavior of the 90's where 'owning the one toll booth on the road' was
considered the height of success. We need to help companies see how creating
an open infrastructure lifts all boats, and sure if you don't execute well you
might get left behind but the whole market is grown much more quickly.

Also around 2008 I met with an executive at Plastic Logic (they were going to
make an E-reader available in January of 2009). When he explained to me that
they were building the screens (the thing they invented), writing the
software, and designing the reader I knew that his company was already dead. I
tried to explain it to him, the market was young, use your special sauce to
develop expertise in the screen space selling to everyone, and once you're
profitable expand into the space. But he wouldn't hear it, they had this
killer tech that no one could touch and the only way to 'maximize company
value' was to own everything from the reader design right up through the
relationships with content providers. While I certainly could have been wrong,
I knew that history was on my side. Sadly I wasn't wrong. They never produced
a product (although they did take pre-orders once).

The Arduino was the exact opposite, anyone can make them, arduinio.cc
providing a sort of architectural glue to keep them consistent and the message
on track. Now, nearly five years later they have made Atmel the envy of every
embedded processor vendor and have introduced perhaps hundreds of thousands of
people to programming, computers, and technology. Way to dent the universe
guys! I salute you.

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akent
I've just recently bought my first Arduino, the Uno, to play around with. The
only thing I'm a little surprised at is how much they intend you to rely on
the somewhat clunky Java based UI.

I would prefer to see some kind of CLI / shell only build system (Makefile or
something else) be given a bit more attention by the official releases. As it
is, it seems like a bit of an afterthought.

~~~
nupark2
The Arduino is just an 8bit AVR microcontroller at heart. You can program it
with avrdude, and write straight C using avr-gcc.

Personally, I use Atmel's development boards and AVR Studio under VMware.

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hsshah
Arduino geeks,

Not sure if this will be considered off topic here; but I will ask anyways.

I am looking for recommendation on how to start with Arduino.

As a hobby, I teach kids 10-14 yrs (started with my nephews) about Computing
technologies. I teach programming concepts using 'Scratch'. But I also want to
introduce them to Hardware and Communications side of it. For my nephews, I
got them Lego Mindstorm NXT and taught them about sensors, motors etc.

However, Mindstrom NXT kit is not cheap. And I cannot expect every kid's
parent to fork out that much money. Do you think Arduino can help here? The
selection of boards seems confusing to me. Anyone you would recommend for
starters?

~~~
gravitystorm
I can heartily recommend a starter kit like the ones that oomlout sell -
[http://www.oomlout.co.uk/arduino-experimentation-kit-
ardx-p-...](http://www.oomlout.co.uk/arduino-experimentation-kit-
ardx-p-183.html) for example. I bought one in summer 2010. They come with a
good selection of examples that you can assemble with the various parts that
it comes with, so takes a lot of the uncertainty out of what you need if, like
me, you're more of a software than a hardware guy and not sure what resistors
should be paired with which LEDs etc.

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pitiburi
I work on my own teaching robotics and programming to kids from 6 to 14 years
old here in Germany (in different languages, many foreigners here), and this
is very good news!! I love this platform, and having a polished product for
the kids jumping into it is great.

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ben1040
I just bought an Uno Makershed kit last weekend. I am still somewhere just
past hello world in my understanding of the interface, to be sure, because my
hardware experience is limited to having used LEGO-LOGO back in the 80s as a
kid.

But then again this seems a lot easier to get my head around than I imagined
it would. I might go so far as to call Arduino a LEGO-LOGO that grew up, moved
out of its parent's house, and got a job.

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aaronbrethorst
And the same day that Makershed shipped me my first Uno, no less.

~~~
gus_massa
Same problem here. I ordered one "UNO kit" for my little girl :) .

If I understand correctly this is only a software update. Is it true? The new
software will work with all the models? Or it is a new (incompatible) board?

~~~
Sanddancer
It's just a software update. People can and have ported Arduino to a lot more
than the ATMega series. Breaking that compatibility isn't something they'd do
lightly; it's why the Arduino still has the funky pin spacings.

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TheAmazingIdiot
My dad gave me a hand-me-down basic stamp microcontroller a while back. It had
a db9 serial interface. Well, I grid working with it: keyword being tried.

This basic stamp made by parallax was powered by a 9v battery, and only the
battery. The serial port used something that multiple usb2serial cables
wouldn't work with, but their expensive cable worked. Because of this, I had
to develop on a windows machine (no compiler for Linux at that time). And
because my only hardware serial portted machine was a Linux box, had to run
windows over virtualbox. My workflow went upwards of 10 minutes per try.
Overall, there was major suckage, and that's not to mention the BASIC language
that was forced.

I just bought an arduino UNO. I went from "hmm" to Theremin-ish device in
about 30 minutes using a piezo speaker, pot, and a LDR/LED combo (and misc
resistors). I played with the hardware and code seamlessly, and updating the
board took 10 seconds. And I just today ordered a 17$ bluetooth shield. I'm
working on a PID/motor board as well for miscellaneous motors I have.

The arduino is actually enjoyable and fun to do stuff with.

