The History and Evolution of Arduino

Arduino is where it all began before the flourishing of various types of boards in 2005. The story began when Massimo Banzi, a teacher at Italy’s Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, needed a low-cost microcontroller platform for his students to learn about electronics and be able to do custom programming on the board. Under an open-source environment, a community of engineers, hackers, and innovative people, all came together to build the first Arduino board called Arduino Serial in 2005. In case you are curious about where the name came from. It was named after a local pub: Bar di Re Arduino. However, there were controversial stories about how this board had been built, and some did not get proper credits for contributing to the birth of Arduino. (https://arduinohistory.github.io/)

Arduino Products

Arduino was just like any product that had its growth and maturity but had to be paced with the technologies available in that period. As a result, it started with an old-style RS-232 serial port version and was later upgraded to a USB version, and now some newer boards come with a Micro HDMI connector.

The microcontroller, the heart of the board, grew from ATmega8, Atmega168, Atmega328, Atmega32u4, Atmega1280, ATmega2560, to a 32-bit processor. In every upgrade, there are many improvements from the previous version. For example, the onboard memory was doubled or even quadrupled, as seen in Atmega1280. More programmable pins became available in later generations. Various form factors begin to take shape for different purposes. There is a LilyPad series that has a thinner, compact form factor, and they come with easy-to-use conductive material for making wearables products. There are affordable prototyping boards like the Uno, Leonardo, Nano, Mega2560, Primo, and Due for their abilities to do modular and adaptable devices.

There are IoT-centric boards that make good connectivity and communication their priority, and they consume less power, making them ideal for IoT applications. they are the MKR VIDOR 4000, MKR1000, MKRZero, MKRFOX1200, Ethernet, and Primo boards. Moreover, there are other boards like Yun/Yun Mini, Zero, Tian, MO/MO Pro, and Industrial 101 aim to serve industrial needs because some of them, like YUN, have true microprocessor power, which they can run the Linux operating system on it.

Finally, there are other Arduino boards built for fun and education, like the Esplora, which is derived from Arduino Leonardo, and the Arduino Robot, which has wheels, and you can build awesome robots from it.

Besides these fancy upgrades and new derived products, there are other changes between upgrades. For example, in an older generation of Arduino boards, you must push the reset button on the board instead of doing it from your computer. Later, things like adding additional resistance, voltage protectors, and new chips are common in upgrades. In recent generations, the boards run at lower 3.3V to minimize power consumption and have better bidirectional communications, and they are equipped with sophisticated chips and interfaces that can do low-power Wi-Fi with a Cryptochip for secure communication using SHA-256 encryption. Indeed, with the expanded memory and processing power, developers can do more and write more complex codes for the new generations of boards.

Future Outlook for Arduino

It’s been an exciting journey to see how Arduino boards have grown into sophisticated devices while trying to keep its cost low and following its early mission when founded. For example, Uno Wi-Fi is one of the latest products that comes with a built-in 8-bit microprocessor from Microchip and crypto chip accelerator to make secure Wi-Fi connection and onboard IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), which tracks motion. The Arduino MKR NB series is the newest class of products that are made with NB-IoT and LTE CAT-M1 wireless technologies and onboard chargeable Li-Po batteries.