Why the Arduino Won and Why It's Here To Stay

ptorrone writes "For years, students, journalists, makers and old-school engineers have asked why the Arduino open source microcontroller platform has taken off, with over 100k units 'in the wild' — it's the platform of choice for many. MAKE's new column discusses why the Arduino has become so popular and why it's here to stay. And for anyone wanting to build an 'Arduino killer' (there are many) — MAKE outlines what they'll need to do."

Great!

[jason18]

It's cheap and affordable, yet it can do so much. The MakeZine section on it is great and has a ton of cool projects. I don't know why people are wondering what's so great about it, because it's really obvious why it is. When it comes down to it, an arduino is a $15 minicomputer.

Arduino "Uno"

[trollertron3000]

Arduino is the project, Uno is the board. There's actually a few other boards they've created: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Hardware [arduino.cc]

If you like them you may also want to checkout many of the other microcontrollers in a Digikey or Mouser catalog. I collect them myself. Everything from PIC to Atmel-based, to Zigbee. They're all quite fun.

The main advantage of the Arduino is it's open source design. The other controllers are not as customizable _before_ production. With arduino you can add things if you need them on board.

Immaculate Timing

[eric2hill]

I literally just opened the box of my first Arduino board about 15 minutes ago. I installed the IDE, plugged it into my computer, loaded the drivers, and sent a few sample programs to the tiny board with -zero- problems.

With an out-of-the-box experience like that, it's no wonder the darn thing is so popular.

Re:The PIC was similar

[Nethead]

In the mid 80's there was the Intel 8052-BASIC chip. [lvr.com] It had a decent integer BASIC with serial interactive I/O and could, with the proper 21(ish) VDC, burn EPROMs. I designed and manufactured a COCOT payphone [wikipedia.org] using it. Quite the fun thing to play with.

Using a Dallas Smartsocket JEDIC socket with a 6564 SRAM chip made a great development environment.

This was back in the mid-80s. This has better speed and Ethernet, but for the decades that have past, not anything astoundingly new.