"I'm so thirsty. You forgot to water me these days."—— You got a call from the orchid at home.
This is not the plot of science fiction. You just need a device called botanicals - it is a leaf shaped circuit board inserted in a flower pot, and the plant will call you, send text messages or update your social network account.
Botanicals prototype design
When it comes to this 2008 project, its creator rob Froude is still very happy“ If this plant is a difficult type to grow, we will make its way of speaking a little more drag. " Like the LEGO robot band, the space capsule made by the father for his son, or the electric car in the shape of a cupcake, botanicals exist because their creators have fantasies about the world and are not satisfied with selling products on the shelves.
People like rob Froude who make whimsical hardware are called makers. The well-known representatives of them are jobs and Wozniak who made personal computers in the garage in the 1970s. Today, although makers are still small, they have become big enough to enter the public's attention. This summer, more than 50000 people joined maker fair in San Francisco. In Shenzhen, the second large-scale Maker Faire attracted 100000 people.
In addition to the strong practical ability and the curiosity of loving tossing, the most frequently heard word in the "maker" circle is "Arduino circuit board". From all kinds of strange hardware gadgets to the commercial products pebble smart watch and makerbot 3D printer raising tens of millions of dollars, they all start with such an insignificant circuit board.
"Fifty years ago, software writers needed to wear a white apron and know all about semiconductors. Now? Even my mother can program. " Massimo Banzi, one of Arduino's founders, said, "we have enabled many people to make their own products." Before that, you need to understand the fundamentals of circuit board assembly and electronic engineering. Although Arduino still needs programming, the difficulty is reduced to a level acceptable to amateur software developers.
In the tenth year of its birth, the Arduino single crystal circuit board, which costs only $30, has now become the symbol of maker movement and open source hardware: more than 1 million pieces have been sold worldwide, not counting hundreds of cloned or modified versions. The Arduino company that gave birth to this circuit board is also very strange. Marketing means are rarely used, and there is no restriction on others to clone and transform their own circuit board products. As a result, Arduino company was divided into two in the later stage, and even needs to change its name to enter the market all over the world.
We recently talked with Massimo Banzi, founder of Arduino, about Arduino's success ten years ago and its future direction.
How did Arduino catch fire in the first place?
"We just did community, not marketing." This is a sentence repeatedly emphasized by founder Massimo when talking about Arduino's early success.
Massimo has been teaching at the ifreya Institute of interactive design in Italy since 2003. At that time, the students of the design school did some art expression projects controlled by computers. However, Massimo soon found that the students' enthusiasm was not high, and most students would only be limited to some simple interaction effects.
"They used a basic stamp controller at that time. This kind of circuit board was about $100 a piece. For students, the price is too expensive, and there are certain requirements for professionalism, so they will try to use as little as possible. " Massimo recalls. This is also the original intention of the birth of Arduino controller, so that the students of design students can do the project at a lower cost.
In 204, Massimo found three other people to start the project together: David cuartielles, a Spanish semiconductor engineer who was visiting in ifreya interactive design at that time, David Mellis and Nicholas zambetti, Massimo's students. Arduino is also named after the bar where they often gather.
Group photo of Arduino founding team. In the lower right corner is Massimo Banz. From left to right are Gianluca Martino, David cuartielles, David Mellis, Massimo Banzi and Tom Igoe
"The students in these two schools do not understand technology, nor do they want to be technical experts. They just want to be designers and artists. They know microcontrollers are useful and want to learn, but they don't want to take the whole engineering course. So we developed Arduino. " Tom Igoe, one of the founding members, recalls.
Arduino was quickly welcomed by students because it did not need programming foundation and was cheap. Massimo also began to consider making Arduino a product that could be sold all over the world, so he brought Tom Igoe, a lecturer at the school of interactive communication (ITP) of New York University who had maintained e-mail contact for many years, and Gianluca Martino, who was good at production, to cooperate. At that time, it was 2005.
"We didn't have the money to do marketing in the early stage, but we just did some small offline activities." Massimo recalls. In 2005, after Arduino started mass production, Massimo emailed friends in London and friends of friends. "We just wanted to ask if anyone would like to spend $100 to participate in a circuit board activity that everyone doesn't understand," Massimo said with a smile.
"Someone really wanted to come. For the first time, we attracted 25 people." At the scene, Massimo showed you Arduino's circuit board and the projects that can be made with this board - which are made by the students of ifreya design students“ Now 10 years have passed, and more than a dozen of these 25 people are still active in our community. " Massimo said.
Arduino uno board
"Circuit boards are not something to show off, but those interesting projects are. Designers don't care about technology itself. They just want to use technology to realize their projects. Therefore, in the early stage, we let the surrounding designers and artists use our circuit boards, and then make works and display them on the Internet. "
In 2006, Tom eggo, one of the founding members of Arduino, copied this practice, took the circuit board to New York University for students to use, and then encouraged them to display their works on the website. Botanicals, the plant phone project we mentioned at the beginning of the article, is one of them. In the same year, Tom egger wrote an email to contact Dale Dougherty, the founder of maker magazine make. Not long after make magazine first reported Arduino, Arduino became a new standard in the maker circle.
"People used to say, 'I want to learn how to program microcontrollers', which is the ultimate goal. Now we say 'I'm going to learn microcontroller programming and then be a robot.' Aigo believes that the reduction of learning threshold has also directly changed people's attitude towards hardware.
Lower the threshold of hardware manufacturing
Botanicals began in 2007. Rob Froude, who was working in the computer laboratory of New York University at that time, and his five person team wanted to attract people's attention to plants and nature, so they thought of this project to make plants anthropomorphic.
However, they had daily development tasks and were not sure how much time to invest in botanicals at that time.
"We have a lot of ideas, but not every idea can invest a lot of energy in development, especially when we don't know whether people are interested. But because of Arduino, the earliest version of botanicals took us only two or three days. When we announced the idea, we found that people were very interested. So we changed this idea into a formal product. " Robo told curiosity daily that up to now, you can still buy botanicals suits on the hardware platform sparkfun.
Because the product concept is very interesting, botanicals also appeared in the New York Times twice. After the project became popular, rob himself joined digi international, a company that also serves open source hardware. Robo told curiosity daily that although they have their own professional skills, the greatest significance of Arduino is to enable them to quickly test the market response“ For us, being able to quickly know what people think of this product means whether we should follow up. Arduino gave us such an opportunity. "
For those who have no programming foundation, Arduino allows them to enter the field of hardware manufacturing without effort.
"Arduino changed my life." Another maker, Judy Castro, told us, "before that, I was a very traditional sculptor."
Dragon shaped coffeeboots dragon shaped coffeeboots
But because of Arduino, she has now become a little famous entrepreneur in the field of education. Judy's project is called coffeeboots, which uses waste coffee cans and a single crystal circuit board Arduino to turn into a small robot that can move at will. She wants to use this project for children's robot education, so that children can also have confidence to access technology at the lowest cost“ I did it without any programming foundation, "Judy said, so she was confident to let the children do it.
Because of Arduino, Judy has been getting busier and busier in the past three years. With the coffee robot selected as the best project by the American maker magazine make, Judy took the coffee pot robot from San Francisco to Shenzhen to participate in the Maker Faire maker exhibition, run schools and educational institutions, and give speeches... She also plans to continue her art career. For the next project, she said she plans to use it back to art, Use Arduino to drive a crocodile robot with a motor.
"Fifty years ago, software writers needed to wear a white apron and know all about semiconductors. Now, even my mother can program. " Massimo said, "we have enabled many people to make their own products."
Open source and replicability make Arduino an industry
At the beginning of the Arduino project, Massimo and his team made a special decision: publish all the information of Arduino's circuit board design and hardware design on the website, and adopt the agreement of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization - which also means that Arduino's circuit board has changed from a private company's product to a clonable Redesignable "open source" hardware projects. The person who refits Arduino does not need to pay the authorization fee to Arduino company or get the knowledge of Arduino team.
"Open source" is the reason why Arduino spreads so fast and widely. According to the data released by the Arduino team, they have sold more than 1 million Arduino circuit boards, and there are 317 circuit boards transformed according to Arduino, ranging from robots to home controllers. Based on Arduino related circuit boards and extended industries, such as transforming Arduino boards and helping makers from Arduino prototypes to mass production, are also rising in the tide of open source hardware.
Sparkfun, a vendor of chip retail components, is a beneficiary of the rise of Arduino. This vertical e-commerce that provides assembly kits for DIY enthusiasts is often accompanied by evaluation materials and instructions, and all packages are open source.
After Arduino became popular, sparkfun also launched an ioio microcontroller specially designed for Android system, so that developers can easily control their works through Android mobile tablet. In 2014, the total number of circuit board products on sparkfun has exceeded 3000, and the annual revenue has reached US $32 million, which has tripled compared with five years ago.
Pan Hao and Massimo of seeedstudio pan Hao and Massimo of seeedstudio
More and more companies in China are doing this, including seeed studio in Shenzhen. Founded in 2008, the company has been selling modified circuit board products related to Arduino and raspberry pie, allowing domestic and foreign makers to buy back the products they want and accelerate the process from electronics to prototypes. The partners of Sidi technology already include Google, Microsoft, Intel and other companies. They are also playing a deeper role in the maker industry: they have built a hardware hackerspace "firewood space" in Shenzhen, allowing Chinese makers to gather in Shenzhen to make hardware; Shenzhen maker fair, which has been held for 4 years.
More small teams have also joined in. For example, microduino, which started in 2013, has developed three generations of products. In two years on KickStarter, they have accumulated more than 360000 US dollars of crowdfunding, and most of the funds come from foreign makers; Also doing this business are yuandou technology, pcduino, and spark, a foreign team specially coming to Shenzhen.
Chip giants have also joined the movement. This year, they also released a development kit with Arduino backplane and Edison module, trying to win over Shenzhen white brand manufacturers and win more developers in the field of intelligent hardware“ "Cooperation while competition" has become the norm between Arduino and Intel.
Qualcomm, which arrived late, also released dragonboard 410C, a microcontroller facing makers, on Maker Faire in Shenzhen this year. It wants Arduino to compete with Intel and other companies
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