Open source hardware – The Arduino

You might have heard of Open Source Hardware. Know more about it from the following post…
Open Source Hardware is the term which means that the information about the hardware can be easily discerned. The open source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open design movement.

Both free and open source software (FOSS) as well as open source hardware is created by this open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a various modules and components being it the hardware design or the software that drives the hardware, the hardware description language (HDL) code etc. to be shared. These components are all released under the FOSS approach.

Arduino:

The Arduino is a single-board microcontroller which was introduced in 2005 under the open source culture movement. The Arduino platform was designed to make the application of interactive objects or environments more accessible with the intention to provide an economically inexpensive and easy way for professionals, hobbyists and students to create devices that interact with their environment using sensors and actuators. Arduino boards can be purchased pre-assembled or as do-it-yourself kits.

Design

A hardware thesis was contributed for a “wiring design” by Hernando Barragan, a Colombian student. After the completion of the Wiring platform, researchers worked out further with the intension to make it lighter, less expensive, and available to the open source community. This was named Arduino.

The Arduino hardware comprises of an open-source hardware board designed around an 8-bit Atmel AVR or a 32-bit Atmel ARM microcontroller with complementary components to facilitate programming and incorporate into other circuits. An important aspect of the Arduino is the standard way that connectors are exposed, allowing the CPU board to be connected to a variety of interchangeable add-on modules known asshields. The Arduino board exposes most of the microcontroller's I/O pins for use by other circuits.

The Diecimila, Duemilanove, and current Uno provide 14 digital I/O pins, six of which can produce pulse-width modulated signals, and six analog inputs.

The current models of Arduino features a USB interface, 6 analog input pins, as well as 14 digital I/O pins which allows the user to attach various extension boards. It comes with a simple integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on regular personal computers and lets users to write programs for Arduino using C or C++.

Applications

The Arduino open source platform has been used in the development of various other hardware projects, Licensed under Arduino which are either Arduino-compatible or Arduino-derived boards. Some are functionally equivalent to an Arduino and may be used interchangeably. Some of the examples are as follows:
• The Xoscillo - an open-source oscilloscope
• The Arduinome - a MIDI controller device
• The Ardupilot - drone software / hardware
• The OBDuino - a trip computer that uses the on-board diagnostics interface found in most modern cars
• The Humane Reader and Humane PC from Humane Informatics
• ArduinoPhone
• Various Scientific equipment, simple robots, thermostats and motion detectors

Final Words

The Arduino hardware and software designs are freely available under license from its developers and the fact that the name "Arduino" be exclusive to the official product and not be used for derived works without permission.

The current prices of Arduino boards costs around €20, or $27 and those of related "clones" as low as $9.

The Arduino project received an honorary mention in the Digital Communities category at the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica