History of Arduino

What is Arduino
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware
and software. Arduino boards are able to read inputs – light on a sensor, a finger on a
button, or a Twitter message – and turn it into an output – activating a motor, turning on
an LED, publishing something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending a
set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board.

History of Arduino
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,
breathalyser 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!
Basic of Arduino Programming
Story in Detail…
As mentioned earlier, it all started in Ivrea, Italy.To begin with, let’s have a look
at how the name Arduino, that sounds quite strange for an electronic device, was
chosen. This beautiful town of Ivrea, situated in Northern Italy, is quite famous for its
underdog kings. In the year 1002 AD, King Arduin (you got it right!) ruled the
country; two years later, he was dethroned by King Henry II of Germany. In
memoir of this King Arduin, there is this ‘Bar Di Re Arduino’, a pub on the cobble
stoned street in the town. Well, this place is where a new era in electronics had its
roots!
This bar was frequently visited by Massimo Banzi, one of the founders of
Arduino, who taught at Ivrea. He was the one who gave the name Arduino to this
low-cost microcontroller board in honor of the place!
Before getting into how the Arduino was developed and used, let’s know who the
core members of the Arduino developer team are: Massimo Banzi, David
Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis.

Arduino developer team – David Cuartielles, Gianluca Martino, Tom Igoe, David Mellis, and
Massimo Banzi.
Photo Courtesy – Randi Klett/IEEE Spectrum
 Arduino was an answer to how to teach students to create electronics fast…
It was in the year 2002 that Banzi, a software architect by profession, was recruited
as an associate professor by IDII in order to promote novel ways of doing interactive
design, in other words, physical computing. Though he had some good ideas, limited
class time and shrinking budget didn’t help him much. Like most of his colleagues,
Banzi had to rely on the BASIC Stamp, a microcontroller developed by Parallax, a
California based company. Engineers had been making use of this microcontroller for
about a decade. The Stamp was coded using the BASIC programming language and
looked like a tidy little circuit board packed with essentials of a power supply, memory, a
microcontroller, and input/output ports to which hardware can be attached. However,
the BASIC Stamp had two issues according to Banzi. One, it did not have sufficient
computing power for some of the projects his students had conceptualized and two, it
was pretty expensive. In fact, a board with its basic parts cost about US $100.
Moreover, Banzi also required something that could run on Macintosh computers which
were largely used by designers at IDII. The new Arduino microcontroller that best suited
their needs had signs of its roots at this point of time.
Meanwhile a designer-friendly programming language called “Processing”
had been developed by Banzi’s colleague from MIT. Processing was quickly gaining
popularity as it enabled even amateur programmers to create complex and beautiful
data visualizations! It was an extremely easy-to-use Integrated Development
Environment or IDE. Banzi really liked this concept and wondered if he and his team
could create similar software programs to code a microcontroller instead of graphics on
a screen.
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 as Wiring; 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!
How Banzi and team managed to create Arduino and make it available for public
 Pretty obviously, the open source model had always been used to fuel innovation
for software and never hardware. If they had to make it work, they had to find a suitable
licensing solution that could apply to the board. After a little investigation, Banzi and
team looked at the whole thing from a different angle and decided to use a license from
Creative Commons, a nonprofit group whose agreements were normally used for
cultural works like writing and music. According to Banzi, hardware is a piece of culture
that must be shared with other people!
Well, the next step was to make the board. The group decided to fix a specific,
student-friendly price of $30 as their goal. Banzi felt that the Arduino should be
affordable for all students. However, they also wanted to make it really quirky,
something that would stand out and look cool as well. While other boards were green,
they wanted to make theirs blue. While a few manufacturers saved on input and output
pins, they added a lot to their board. Quite weirdly, they added a little map of Italy on the
back of the Arduino board!
Gianluca Martino, one of the ‘real’ engineers on the team felt that
the nontraditional and raw approach to circuit board design was pretty enlightening. He
thought that the product created was a result of a new way of thinking about electronics;
not in an engineering way wherein you have to count electrodes, but using a DIY
approach.
The product created by the team comprised of inexpensive parts that could be
found easily if users wanted to create their own boards. However, an important decision
was to ascertain that it would essentially be plug_and_play: something someone could
just take out of a box, plug into a system and use it right away. On the other hand,
boards such as the BASIC Stamp demanded the users to shell out a lot of other items
that ultimately added to the total cost. However, for the Arduino, a user needs to just
pull out a USB cable from the board and merely connect it to a computer to program the
device.
, David Cuartielles, a telecommunications engineer of the team laurels the
philosophy of Arduino stating that if one wants to learn electronics, he or she must be
able to learn from day one rather than starting with Algebra and Arduino is ideal to learn
electronics from day one.
Tom Igoe, a professor of physical computing at the New York University was
very much impressed with the affordability and extraordinary concept of the Arduino and
he is now a core member of the Arduino team.
Philosophy in Action….
The team soon decided to put that philosophy to test. They gave 300 blank
printed circuit boards to students of IDII with a simple directive: Look up the assembly
instructions available online, build your own board and use it to create something. Many
projects came up and one was a homemade alarm clock that hung from the ceiling by a
cable. The clock would rise tauntingly higher into the air until you just had to get up
whenever you hit the snooze button!
 Very soon, many people came to know of the boards and they wanted one as
well. It was Banzi’s friend who ordered one unit and became the first customer. The
project started to take off and one major aspect was missing – a name for the invention!
And, one night, over drinks at the local bar, it struck Banzi: Arduino, just like the bar –
and the king…..
As you could easily figure it out, word of Arduino rapidly spread online – with no
marketing or advertising, taking the DIY world by storm!!

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