SS Connection
It was in the year 2005 that the first ever Arduino board was born in the classrooms of the Interactive Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. Well, if you are not very familiar with the term, an Arduino is an Open Source microcontroller based development board that has opened the doors of electronics to a number of designers and creative engineers.It was in the Interactive Design Institute that a hardware thesis was contributed for a wiring design by a Colombian student named Hernando Barragan. The title of the thesis was “Arduino–La rivoluzione dell’open hardware” (“Arduino – The Revolution of Open Hardware”). Yes, it sounded a little different from the usual thesis but none would have imagined that it would carve a niche in the field of electronics.
A team of five developers worked on this thesis and when the new wiring platform was complete, they worked to make it much lighter, less expensive, and available to the open source community.
About the Arduino
The new prototype board, the Arduino, created by Massimo Banzi and other founders, is a low-cost microcontroller board that allows even a novice to do great things in electronics. An Arduino can be connected to all kind of lights, motors, sensors and other devices; easy-to-learn programming language can be used to program how the new creation behaves. Using the Arduino, you can build an interactive display or a mobile robot or anything that you can imagine.
You can purchase an Arduino board for just about US $30 or build your own board from scratch. Consequently, Arduino has become the most powerful open source hardware movement of its time.
David A. Mellis, the lead software developer of Arduino, states that this little board has made it possible for people to do things they wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Today, there are Arduino-based LED cubes, Twitter displays, DNA analysis kits, breathalyzer and so much more. There are Arduino parties and Arduino clubs. As a feather to its crown, Google has recently released an Arduino-based development kit for its Android Smartphone!
Contribution of Hernando Barragan
One of Banzi’s students, Hernando Barragan, took the first baby step in the direction towards creating software tools similar to Processing. He developed a new prototyping platform known asWiring; it included both a user-friendly IDE as well as a ready-to-use circuit board. It turned out to be a promising project the success of which continues till date; however, Banzi was already having bigger dreams. He wished to make a platform that was even cheaper, simpler and easier to use.
The First Prototype Board
Well, Banzi succeeded in creating the first prototype board in the year 2005; it was a simple design and at that time, it wasn’t called Arduino. Of course, by now, you would know how he had coined the name later that year.
Open Source Model – A Big Decision
Banzi and his collaborators strongly believed in open-source software. As the purpose was to develop a quick and easily accessible platform, they thought it would be better to open up the project to as many people as possible instead of keeping it closed. Another crucial factor that contributed to that big decision was that after operating for nearly five years, IDII had no more funds left and was, in fact, going to shut its doors. All the faculty members feared that their projects might not survive or would be embezzled. It was at this crucial point of time that Banzi decided to go ahead and make it open source!
Bibliography:
http://www.circuitstoday.com/story-and-history-of-development-of-arduino