Is Arduino Due coming?

More seriously, I hear what you say about the issue of buying clone boards, but the issue is a tricky one, with a lot of apparent contradictions lurking beneath the surface.

On one hand, I think it's a good thing to vote with your $$$, and put money towards the companies and inividuals who you would like to see rewarded for their work in the open hardware and open source arena. It's not really different from donating to a worthy charity that you think is doing good work.

OTOH, surely the whole point of open hardware and open source is not about a financial reward, but rather non-monetary rewards. I'm thinking about the Stallman manifesto on "free" software from way back when.

The other thing is that if you are open, you must expect to be copied by people whose sole motivation is to make a buck. That's just axiomatic. I don't see how you could ever imagine it's not going to happen.

So the question is: Why are you going down the "open" route in the first place? Can your business (or non-business) model stand being potentially undercut by cloners?

There are certainly some open-source companies that have built very profitable businesses around the open source/open hardware concept. But they are usually doing something clever in terms of value adding (e.g. consulting, support) to get a revenue stream that is not for the licensing of the software or hardware design per se. Tricky stuff. I think it's a helluva neat trick if you can pull it off.

I'm not sure where the value add comes in terms of say, an Uno. If I am supposed to feel bad for buying an Uno clone, what if instead I buy a 328p chip, add a half dozen component to end up with a home-brewed Uno class dev board, and then program it with the Arduino IDE?

You might reasonably say "but what about all the effort that went into developing the Arduino IDE? You can't ignore that, you freeloader."

Fair enough. But when you consider the IDE is really essentially wrapping paper for the Gnu compiler that actually does all the heavy lifting, how does it make sense to financially reward only the makers of the wrapping paper but leave the makers of the Gnu compiler financially unrewarded?

It strikes me as akin to taking a taxi to hospital where a brilliant surgeon saves your life, and then tipping the taxi driver handsomely in your gratitude!

You might (also) reasonably say "but what about the 'wiring' libs? Surely that's value-added over and above the Gnu compiler?"

Fair enough. But then there are also all the third party libs that (personally) I actually find are far more valuable than the wiring stuff, but once again, how does it make sense to financially reward only the makers of the 'wiring' libs but leave the authors of the (much more valuable, imho) third part libraries financially unrewarded?

And finally, there is the question of scale. The total development effort of the entire Arduino development team to date just disappears into insignificance when compared against the sheer number of man-hours of development effort of something like the Gnu compiler. Or the AVR chips, for that matter.

When I buy a clone board, Atmel still get their financial reward. When I buy an "official" board. the developers of the Gnu compiler and the authors of the third party libs still get nothing.

Lots of contradictions. If it really is a moral issue (and I'm not sure even that's true), then it certainly isn't a straightforward one.

Lots of contradictions. If it really is a moral issue (and I'm not sure even that's true), then it certainly isn't a straightforward one.

Well put. I love the Arduino concept and the way they have executed both their platform and their own hardware offerings. But make no mistake, their platform rests on top of many other independent open source projects, the compiler/linker and Wiring libraries you mentions, AVRDUDE for uploading, Processing for the IDE which in turn uses Java, etc. So the Arduino company added on additional open source contrubution like bootloaders and libraries, designed a very basic hardware platform and released all their contrubutions as open source. I think they in no way expected any 'moral' obligation for users to contribute to their financial income stream other then buying their products if they wished, nor expected clones to not be avaible nor purchased by users. I think the only thing they have tried to protect is their brand name, Arduino, and have asked cloners to respect it when it comes to naming of their products and marketing language.

So I own Arduino build boards, 3rd party value added boards, and simple knock off clone boards and I don't feel I've violated any obligations owed to the Arduino company nor the open source community at large.

Lefty

Pico
I agree with most of what you say but not all of it.
I would advice to listen to the video (the open source thread is in the Q&A part).
I would formulate the statement like "We do not feel hurt by people making variations of arduino ( because they bring added value); we do not feel hurt by people making and selling arduino clones; we do feel hurt by people why make and sell a clone that looks like an arduino and sell it like an arduino. This because Arduino sponsor money is not send to arduino."
I see this as: Someone goes around with a collection box for Arduino and does not give the collected money to arduino. This is called fraud. This has nothing to do with the open source nature of Arduino.
However the open source nature of arduino makes it easier for people to fraud.

pico:
The other thing is that if you are open, you must expect to be copied by people whose sole motivation is to make a buck. That's just axiomatic. I don't see how you could ever imagine it's not going to happen.
So the question is: Why are you going down the "open" route in the first place? Can your business (or non-business) model stand being potentially undercut by cloners?

Eventhough I agree with the first part of the statement, I find that the second part is extremely dangerously wrong minded. The sentence may be interpreted like "As you do open source don't complain people copying your work". This interpretation is completely wrong.
As a human I would say it sounds like "If you go out with money; don't complain when you get robbed."
A more legal comparison is with patents: If you request a patent in the USA you have to disclose all details. As soon as that is done, china can copy your work 100% legal and 100% informed just as if it is open source. But no country in the world with a mutual patent agreement with the USA is legally allowed to import those goods. So it is law which is protecting the patent owners and it is law which protects the arduino trademark.

pico:
OTOH, surely the whole point of open hardware and open source is not about a financial reward, but rather non-monetary rewards. I'm thinking about the Stallman manifesto on "free" software from way back when.

It is very noble to give stuff away for free. However everybody needs to eat. The question is: Do you go for "enough to survive" the "whole plate", the "whole dish",......the"whole world". From all donations for my plugin I'm not able to feed myself during the time I developed it. I'm not sad about it, it was my choice to develop it, my choice to shape it, and it will be my choice on how to take it further. My point is, if you want to survive in a donation world you need to push people to donate. Arduino has this push with their branding.

pico:
Fair enough. But when you consider the IDE is really essentially wrapping paper for the Gnu compiler that actually does all the heavy lifting, how does it make sense to financially reward only the makers of the wrapping paper but leave the makers of the Gnu compiler financially unrewarded?

i advice you to rethink the value of good wrapper software. I have been in software development for decades and I can really appreciate a good wrapper like the IDE. The fact most people do not know that the ide is mostly a wrapper means it is a really good wrapper.

pico:
It strikes me as akin to taking a taxi to hospital where a brilliant surgeon saves your life, and then tipping the taxi driver handsomely in your gratitude!

This happens all the time. Think about what managers and sales people urn compared to technical people. ]:smiley:
It is impossible to say who or what did it; so finding out who really urns the tip is nearly impossible.

I really like this analogy because giving tips is essential to any eco system. And tip's do not have to be financial. I know for instance that some people have made an arduino library as contribution because they felt they already got so much from the eco system. Other people give away their code because they see no commercial benefit so they feel they can just as well make it open source.

My conclusion: Indeed it is a complex eco system. The only way that the eco system will stay healthy is by a huge amount of members doing a contribution. Contribution is in most cases not money.
But in the end we all need to eat and feed our children. So -in our society- money will come lurking around. And I feel the Arduino core team is really mature about it. I would translate it as "When you start learning Arduino; buy a UNO and then we'll see." and "Don't fraud."

Sorry for the rant

Best regards
Jantje

kind of drifting way off topic...

Jantje:
...
A more legal comparison is with patents: If you request a patent in the USA you have to disclose all details. As soon as that is done, china can copy your work 100% legal and 100% informed just as if it is open source. But no country in the world with a mutual patent agreement with the USA is legally allowed to import those goods. So it is law which is protecting the patent owners and it is law which protects the arduino trademark.

patents vs open source are not even close to the same thing.
A patent is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to protect it.
Open Source is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to give it away.

These two are very different.

And I agree with Pico, in that given our capitalistic greed driven societies,
that if you give something away for free, you have
to be naive to think that there won't be somebody out there that will attempt to take
that free resource and attempt to monetize it.

With respect to trademarks,
if you closely looked at the "Arduino" trademark, it was only recently
assigned, and IMHO, I think they were lucky to have obtained the US "Arduino" mark - given their delay.
The Arduino guys were complaining about use of their "trademark"
a few years before they bothered to follow through with the proper legal paper work
to make it an official legal trademark.
i.e. if you want to play in the real world of business, you need to understand certain
rules of the game, especially if you want to have legal protection for things like IP
or trademarks.

--- bill

bperrybap
I agree it is off-topic but still interesting 8)

bperrybap:

Jantje:
...
A more legal comparison is with patents: If you request a patent in the USA you have to disclose all details. As soon as that is done, china can copy your work 100% legal and 100% informed just as if it is open source. But no country in the world with a mutual patent agreement with the USA is legally allowed to import those goods. So it is law which is protecting the patent owners and it is law which protects the arduino trademark.

patents vs open source are not even close to the same thing.
A patent is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to protect it.
Open Source is a disclosure of IP in an attempt to give it away.

These two are very different.

I never stated that patents and open source are not very different. But if you are in china and the patent is in USA it is 100% legal to copy and you have 100% information on how to do it. Even if you are a researcher or doing non commercial things for yourself there is little distinction between the 2.
This because patents are there to share the work without losing the copy right. With the same idea as with open source that when you share it will grow.
Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Jantje:
I never stated that patents and open source are not very different. But if you are in china and the patent is in USA it is 100% legal to copy and you have 100% information on how to do it. Even if you are a researcher or doing non commercial things for yourself there is little distinction between the 2.
This because patents are there to share the work without losing the copy right.
With the same idea as with open source that when you share it will grow.

Patents are to protect the commercial rights to an idea. It has nothing to do with copyrights.
i.e. it controls who has the right to make a product for sale or use the idea in a commercial product.
Individuals are always allowed to use patented ideas and implement them in their
own personal products.

Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Duh...
I'm quite familiar with the patent/trademark systems (US vs EU vs Asia vs rest of world)
as well as copyrights and various licensing: gpl (v2 vs v3) bsd, apachie, creative commons, and a
variety of others. How they work and the limitations involving closed vs open source in derivative works.
I have more than a dozen issued patents many of which are International not just US with 3 currently still
pending. I was founder of company that we took public in the late 90's (EFNT on nasdaq)
and then grew to 800 employees and finally sold it for $1B a few years later,
so I'm very familiar with many of the intricacies of the patent system
(including the recent US changes from "first to invent" to "first to file")
as well as the advantages and issues surrounding using
open source in commercial products.


There are many different "open source" licenses and as a business if you choose to deal
with open source (use it or give it away) you have understand what it really means by
understanding the risks of using it in your products and potential risks to the profits
(businesses are about making money right?) and how it can potentially enable competitors.

Some licenses like LGPL are essentially "freeware" where GPL v3 is at the opposite end of the spectrum
which requires opening up anything that touches it as well as some patent enforcement restrictions.
And there are many that land in between.

(I'll drop out now as this is moving into a open source philosophy discussion which
is way off topic)

--- bill

bill

bperrybap:

Don't be fooled about open source. It is not because you can freely "read" the code there are no patents in there and there is no copy right. If you can be bothered read the gpl, cpl and epl licences. or read this wiki page Eclipse Public License - Wikipedia
Best regards
Jantje

Duh...
EDIT: Personal add removed


EDIT: repetition of what is in the provided link removed

(I'll drop out now as this is moving into a open source philosophy discussion which
is way off topic)

--- bill

Can you explain why you say "Duh..." and add a lot of text. I mean I don't see the relation between "Duh..." and the remainder of the text.
Maybe "Duh..." is not denigrating in your country but it is in mine. So at least I would like to know what makes you do this.
Jantje

Can we please keep the same old arguement out of this topic ?

And a link http://arduino.cc/ArudinoDUE to a page that will contain more info soon (whatever that may be)
I'll buy one just to make sure my plugin works with it.

Best regards
Jantje

I came across a flickr set of the Due dev board. General pinout is very Mega2560-ish but looking here I notice SCL1 and SDA1 next to AREF, plus a 10-pin header where the 6-pin ICSP for 16U2 is on the Mega2560r3. And here A12..A15 have changed to DA0, DA1, CAN RX0, CAN TX0.

SCL1 and SDA1 next to AREF

All new boards have the I2C signals over there I think.

10-pin header where the 6-pin ICSP for 16U2 is on the Mega2560r3

That will be the JTAG header for the SAM.

A12..A15 have changed to DA0, DA1, CAN RX0, CAN TX0.

CAN and the DAC (I guess), well they had to come out somewhere.

Also those pics have been around for a while, they must be of an earlier version as there is only a single USB jack, the current board has two.


Rob

Does anybody know what the difference between the two jacks are?

funkyguy4000:
Does anybody know what the difference between the two jacks are?

The following is from the PDF Telecommando linked to...

The Due hast two micro USB connectors one
intended for debugging purpose and a secondo one
capablo ef acting as a USB host, allowing externa USB
peripherals such as mouse, keyboards, smartphones,
etc. to be connected to the Arduino Due.

So they are probably completely separate as far as communication, and you can probably think of one as working similar to the USB port on the Uno and the other as more like a fully integrated USB host shield.

@funkyguy4000

One USB port is connected directly to the processor and has an OTG connector, this means that it can be used as an USB host to connect devices like mouse, keyboard, android phones etc
The Second USB port is connected to the UART0 via the usual atmega16u2 we use on the other boards. this port is used for programming and communicating with the board. This allows you to develop projects using the USB host without having to plug and unplug cables all the time.

The board has a 4 pin SWD connector that can be used to debug code using a SWD/JTAG dongle. There is also a footprint for a 14pin jtag connector.

The pictures robotgrrl posted on the flickr account are of an old beta board we gave out in may to a number of beta testers and it didn't have the second USB port.

We upgraded the power supply to a DCDC converter that can provide enough current to the USB host so that now the Due can be used as an ADK2 development board

if you have other questions, shoot!

m

Just a couple layout questions.

  1. The Due obviously looks very "mega-ish", does this mean that the pins will be laid out in a similar fashion? Having the PWM pins over here, the communication over here, digital there, and analog over there?

  2. If I'm not mistaken, the Due has been in development since the release of the new R3 layout, will the SDA and SCL lines be mapped to analog pins or will they be broken out like on the new R3 boards?

  1. this is the first board we make with the SAM3X but not the last one :wink: we decided to adopt the mega layout to help people migrate their apps as easily as possible. In the future we'll explore different layouts.

  2. The Due follows the R3 layout that we developed to make the standard layout more flexible/homogeneous (i.e. having easy access to the I2C) and to support boards operating at voltages other than 5v (IOREF PIN)
    Unfortunately the mega328 on the UNO has I2c multiplexed on two analog pins while already on the mega (or leonardo) they are on different pins. Any current Arduino boards is based on R3 and solves the problem by placing I2C in the same position on every

m

Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

bperrybap:
Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread. I believe some of us feel that many a new beginner will most likely (or at least potentially) suffer damage from using non-Due compatible shields. Venders of shields will probably have to be burdened to state with their shield offerings if their shield products work with Due only or older arduino + Due or older 5vdc arduinos only. I don't see a good case for why they didn't give the Due a whole new shield footprint to work with?

Lefty

retrolefty:

bperrybap:
Is the DUE is using a compatible shield footprint as the Uno/Mega?
If so, Is the DUE 5V tolerant on the inputs?
Or are users potentially going to be burning up inputs when they attempt
to use their existing 5V shields on the DUE?

In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?

--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread. I believe some of us feel that many a new beginner will most likely (or at least potentially) suffer damage from using non-Due compatible shields. Venders of shields will probably have to be burdened to state with their shield offerings if their shield products work with Due only or older arduino + Due or older 5vdc arduinos only. I don't see a good case for why they didn't give the Due a whole new shield footprint to work with?

Lefty

From the SAM3X datasheets...

Voltage on Input Pins
with Respect to Ground....................................-0.3V to + 4.0V

So the IC's I/O pins certainly can't take 5 VDC logic. I suppose it's possible for there to be optional FET based level shifter circuitry for each I/O pin, but it's very unlikely they included it on the stock Due...

retrolefty:

bperrybap:


In other words, if the DUE is backwards compatible with existing shields,
how do you prevent users from damaging their DUE when plugging in 5V shields?
--- bill

That was discussed by several of us in this or possible another Due based thread.


I've seen a few discussions on this.
I was wanting to hear a definitive answer straight from the horses mouth, somebody
on the Arduino team, perhaps Massimo Banzi
as most of the discussion about this that has happened so far is from/by folks that don't have access
to the real product and as such is speculation on what will/won't be in the final version
of the product.

--- bill