Learning about Arduino – The company
Arduino is an open source hardware and software company that was set up to simplify how embedded systems engineering is taught to students at a tertiary level. It began as a project in 2005, designed and soldered on a printed circuit board (PCB) using an ATmega8 chip from Atmel. This was an 8-bit chip. While the particular chip on an Arduino board isn’t frequently brought up, the significance cannot be overstated.
The company provided both a board and a way to flash firmware onto the board. This simplified the process of getting machine code onto the chip that was put onto the board.
Over the years, Arduino has released additional boards with different chips and other peripherals on them, aimed at different users. It has made enhancements to the IDE, making it possible to support boards from other manufacturers. The Arduino programming language makes it possible to use one language to program different boards without dealing with the underlying differences. Finally, the Arduino Cloud provides an IoT interface for compatible boards.
