Qualcomm acquires Arduino

[tooki]

Frankly the STM32U585 would have been a fun chip to put on a maker board. Especially if they can design it into a form factor/schematic that utilizes its low power features.

ST itself already sells boards with the U575 (same as U585, just without the encryption accelerator) and the U5A5 (even more advanced version of the U585, with more flash, and high-speed USB). They are Nucleo 144 boards, which include an Arduino header, onboard hardware debugger, and power management (including tons of jumpers to set up every possible configuration). They’re quite competitively priced IMHO, are beautifully manufactured, and they are supported in the Arduino environment. (And yes, the schematics, etc. are available.)

Frankly people should look at the Nucleo boards more often. I think they’re a great value for a name-brand product.

https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/nucleo-u575zi-q.html
https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/nucleo-u5a5zj-q.html

[ataradov]

Just being open source is pointless unless you dedicate resources to maintain it. And you will have to have "clones" to have clear people that decide what goes in. You can have free for all merge Fridays where anything gets accepted.

Nobody is going to clone the Q because they are also selling it at a loss (especially if you also consider operational expenses and R&D), since it is not their main business, it comes out of the marketing budget. Arduino had to make profit to survive. This board does not have to make any profit. This is how big corporations kill everything.

[tooki]

Every time you install/update a library, it will turn to their servers to download the libraries.
And I think the IDE 2.x is always online. IDK, I didn't update.

As I understand it, all the library files are open source.
So anyone could move the files to github or something and then have a new open source IDEs grab then from there cutting Arduino the company and all their servers out entirely

Not only the libraries, but the IDE, too.

People forget that Arduino itself, including the IDE, is a fork of an older open-source project called Wiring, which in turn used the IDE from another project called Processing.

So if people were to get too fed up with Arduino and moved en masse to Libreduino (much like what happened to OpenOffice and LibreOffice), it would not in any way be out of character for the lineage. See also: https://arduinohistory.github.io/

[brucehoult]

People forget that Arduino itself, including the IDE, is a fork of an older open-source project called Wiring, which in turn used the IDE from another project called Processing.

Which people?

I remember when, if you stuck to the documented Wiring language your sketches would run as either C++ or Java with no changes, due to the preprocessing done to your source before compilation -- adding Java class bollocks for Java, and prepending includes and auto-generated function prototypes for C++.

[DavidAlfa]

I can see the future...

"Sorry, accessing Arduino download section requires a user account".
"Sorry,  you need a corporate email to register for Arduino download section. Generic emails like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail are not allowed."
"Please enter your work: Aerospace engineer - Nuclear fussion research - CEO - Chief engineer"
"Please enter the approximate yearly sales volume: 10 -100M - 500M"

"Sorry, go elsewhere you broken bastard - We only allow wealthy people here"

But - I hope they destroy that stupid Arduino IDE. V1 was crap. V2 is crap. V10000 will be crap.
At least, make a truly "PRO" version. Let the classic crappy one alone for anyone, but add a decent and powerful one like CubeIDE etc.
VS code is even worse...

[John Celo]

Nobody is going to be paying anywhere close to the BOM prices people are listing off from Mouser when making these boards. Even if you take the full-reel/10k pricing, the price is ways off.
That being said, this looks like pretty good value overall compared to most other Arduino boards that are usually wildly overpriced.

There have been SBC + MCU devboards before, but those have been weird oneoffs without a big recognizeable brand behind it.

I do hope this takes off. And hopefully Qualcom opens up the relevant source/docs atleast in regards to this particular SoC.

[brucehoult]

without a big recognizeable brand behind it.

Five academics run Arduino SRL (Italy, production) and Arduino LLC (US) from 2008 to 2025 (17 years), sticking to the knitting and establish a brand recognised world-wide and with on-going sales.

What's the bet the big recognisable brand finds it doesn't meet corporate expectations and kills it within five years? Do I have any advance on five years?

[SteveThackery]

But - I hope they destroy that stupid Arduino IDE. V1 was crap. V2 is crap. V10000 will be crap.
At least, make a truly "PRO" version. Let the classic crappy one alone for anyone, but add a decent and powerful one like CubeIDE etc.
VS code is even worse...

I do Arduino development from within MS Visual Studio using Visual Micro:

https://www.visualmicro.com

It's wonderful to use compared with either Arduino IDE, and has proper hardware and software debugging, plus the various niceties of VS.

[metrologist]

This is worse than finding out my online girlfriend has disappeared... 

[RoGeorge]

Arduino IDE 2 has hardware debugging, too, has the same origin as VScode, just that it is customized and branded as Arduino IDE 2.

[johnboxall]

without a big recognizeable brand behind it.

What's the bet the big recognisable brand finds it doesn't meet corporate expectations and kills it within five years? Do I have any advance on five years?

24 months

[NiHaoMike]

But - I hope they destroy that stupid Arduino IDE. V1 was crap. V2 is crap. V10000 will be crap.
At least, make a truly "PRO" version. Let the classic crappy one alone for anyone, but add a decent and powerful one like CubeIDE etc.

That's called PlatformIO. (Which, BTW, is not dependent on VScode even if the site makes it look like it is.)

What's the bet the big recognisable brand finds it doesn't meet corporate expectations and kills it within five years? Do I have any advance on five years?

Having once worked at Qualcomm, a lot of the lab setups made use of Arduinos as USB to I2C/SPI/whatever converters. (Also Beaglebone Blacks as logic analyzers cheap enough to put one on every test setup.) That was about 10 years ago so it's entirely possible they moved on, but over the years, that built up a lot of internal user base for Arduino.

[ledtester]

This video just came out...

ARDUINO UNO Q Face Controlled Car -- James Burton
https://youtu.be/EGDxAXpH_Ag

From the video's description...

Ad: I was given early access to the Arduino UNO Q and invited to the product launch. I used the face tracking example from the new Arduino App Lab on the UNO Q to control a car I can ride in. Check out the full Arduino UNO Q announcement:    • Arduino Global Event - From Blink to Think 

The car was 3D printed and made from fibreglass tubes. I used two brushless motors to drive it, and build electric steering. The microcontroller part of the Arduino UNO Q drive the hardware using a normal Arduino sketch, while the face tracking part runs on the Linux side of the UNO Q.

He demoed the car at Turin's National Motor Museum which was interesting to learn about.

[rteodor]

Arduino IDE 2 has hardware debugging, too, has the same origin as VScode, just that it is customized and branded as Arduino IDE 2.

Better say "had hardware debugging". Is there anything now besides first Arduino Zero with EDBG, that later was removed and debugging is now done by bootloader (M0+) ?

[RoGeorge]

I don't know, there is a list of boards supporting hardware debugging, random search result:
https://www.slashgear.com/1595272/which-arduino-boards-support-debugging/

That blog post is from 2024.  Did Arduino removed the debugger from the Arduino IDE in the last year?

[rteodor]

Its just that debugging via the bootloader ain't hardware debugging in my personal dictionary. That's all.

[RoGeorge]

The link that I've posted is about hardware debugging, those boards do not use a software stab, that is my understanding from the link posted above.

Anyway, I won't insist, since I don't use Arduino IDE 2.  When I really need hardware debugging for Arduino boards (like Arduino nano or Arduino UNO (based on ATmega328 AVR), I use the Debug-Wire feature of that microcontroller, but I'm using Eclipse instead of Arduino IDE.  Works even for smaller AVR chips, this is a printscreen for hardware debugging an ATtiny13 using Linux + Eclipse + dwdebug + AVR-GDB + debug-wire, and a generic USB to serial with CH340 + a diode as the debugging probe:


printscreen from https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/avr-(arduino)-linux-debug/msg3511900/#msg3511900

[langwadt]

Arduino IDE 2 has hardware debugging, too,.

doesn't that ruin the authentic experience of programming like it was the 1980's?

[NiHaoMike]

This is worse than finding out my online girlfriend has disappeared... 

More like taken by an abusive giant, then used for her name and branding to make extra revenue for said giant. If that fails, she gets gruesomely ripped apart for whatever parts are still good. Luckily, the community, recognizing what was going to happen, had made a clone of her (possible thanks to open source), so forget all the horrible things that happened and just learn to love again. Wait, did I just describe Microsoft Windows 10/11 and WSL?

[Simmed]

hmmmm wait a minute
they are not gonna go around and start bricking clones are they ?

[NiHaoMike]

I assume Qualcomm would be smart enough to realize that pulling a FTDI would not help them, especially if the clones still use the chips they sell.

[langwadt]

I assume Qualcomm would be smart enough to realize that pulling a FTDI would not help them, especially if the clones still use the chips they sell.

if FTDI was dumb enough why not others?

[NiHaoMike]

The backlash against FTDI was so great that much of the market turned to alternatives.

[brucehoult]

The backlash against FTDI was so great that much of the market turned to alternatives.

WCH is happy.

And they seem to be good people, easy to contact in person e.g. CTO @patrick_riscv on Twitter.

[eTobey]

This is how big corporations kill everything.

I dont know much about the arduino world, but maybe they bought them, so they can get rid of them? Are there any hints for this idea?