Arduino is one of the most famous makers of the world, meaning one of the representatives of the culture of do-it-yourself electronics, thanks to its open hardware cards. It’s an Italian company which however is becoming more and more international with the opening of branches in Shanghai, Japan and the USA.

The Arduino project was born in 2005 with educational purposes. The founders of the project met in a bar in Ivrea called Arduino, as Arduino of Ivrea, king of Italy between 1002 and 1014. Over the years, they produced cards with various features whose purpose went well beyond the educational one.

Arduino boards are open hardware so the circuit layouts are available and anyone can create clones or variants. This allowed the creation of an ecosystem of both hardware and software because both enthusiasts and professionals have started using Arduino in many different ways writing software released as open source.

The community created around the Arduino projects also led to the development of solutions to connect Arduino boards to other electronic devices, from computers to sensors. Synergies were also developed with other types of open hardware put on the market in recent years such as the famous Raspberry Pi. In 2013, Intel introduced its first electronic Galileo boards, compatible with Arduino, a demonstration of the project’s success.

All this has led to a business expansion for Arduino, which is becoming more and more an international company. The new branches were opened because the company needs to adapt to the new situation but remembering the original spirit of the project.

Arduino looks to the demands of the market, where there are companies that want to use Arduino boards to integrate them into solutions at low cost yet sophisticated. The growth of sectors such as home automation are causing a significant increase in requests for cards such as Arduino, cheap but with good support and documentation.

At the same time, Arduino will keep on producing open hardware because the community developed around the company’s products thanks to that feature. A change would mean losing a lot of support and would cause an implosion of a very rich ecosystem. In short, the company is evolving without forgetting its basic principles.

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