The Untold History of Arduino

Summary

日本語 · italiano · Deutsch · Français Index Why Are You Writing This? Hello. My name is Hernando Barragán. Through the years, and more recently due to the affairs between Arduino LLC and Arduino S.R.L., I have received a lot of questions from people about the history of Wiring and, of course, Arduino. I was also shown this US Federal Courts website, which presents documents citing my work to support the plaintiff’s claims which, in my opinion, contribute to the distortion of information surrounding my work. The history of Arduino has been told by many people, and no two stories match. I want to clarify some facts around the history of Arduino, with proper supported references and documents, to better communicate to people who are interested, about Arduino’s origin. As well, I will attempt to correct some things that have distorted my role or work by pointing out common mistakes, misleading information, and poor journalism. I will go through a summary of the history first, then I will answer a series of questions that I have been often asked over the years. Why Did You Create Wiring? I started Wiring in 2003 as my Master’s thesis project at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) in Italy. The objective of the thesis was to make it easy for artists and designers to work with electronics, by abstracting away the often complicated details of electronics so they can focus on their own objectives. The full thesis document can be downloaded here: http://people.interactionivrea.org/h.barragan/thesis/thesis_low_res.pdf Massimo Banzi and Casey Reas (known for his work on Processing) were supervisors for my thesis. The project received plenty of attention at IDII, and was used for several other projects from 2004, up until the closure of the school in 2005. Because of my thesis, I was proud to graduate with distinction; the only individual at IDII in 2004 to receive the distinction. I continued the development of Wiring while working at the Universidad de Los Andes in Col...