The Arduino Community needs a statement as to just where Arduino is heading

Hello

This is as good a place as any to post my topic.

The Arduino Community needs a statement as to just where Arduino is heading.
We need to know the status of all Arduino boards.
Which arduino.org boards are going to be discontinued?
Has arduino.org supplied all the necessary documents for the open source boards and software?

What is the future of the Arduino Yun & Arduino Tian?

I have a significant investment is Arduino boards and projects.
many of the project rely on the Ardiuno Yun and Arduino Yun Shield.

The Mkr1000 boards is also being considered for several projects.

I am at a crossroads it is stay with Arduino or shift to the Raspberry Pi Compute Modules.

I would much rather stay with Arduino but right now I am uneasy with all the unknowns in the
Arduino organization. I look at the Arduino Store and many boards are out of stock.

What is the status of the Linino and Doghunter designed boards?
The Yun and Tian are directly affected by the answer to that question.
Do the Yun and Tian have a future?

Given the numerous articles about the person who controls both doghunter and linino domains I am extremely unease about relying on Linino for any further updates and/or support for the Arduino Yun Boards.

I have a bad felling that the Arduino Drama is not over. I have a bed feeling that the person who is suppose to pursue other opportunities outside of Arduino is going to be a thorn in Arduino Community.
He has registered many domain names with "arduino" in the domain name .

I do not want to have to literally shred the Arduino boards.

I realize that the Arduino Saga will take some time to sort out.
The Arduino Community just needs some words of encouragement that there is a Arduino Future.

The Arduino Community needs a statement as to just where Arduino is heading.

We've HAD "a statement." What we need are the details of the implementation and roadmap...

Which arduino.org (or arduino.cc) boards are going to be discontinued?
What is the future of the Arduino Yun & Arduino Tian?

Yeah, like those.

I suspect that the current Arduino team is having difficulties lining up manufacturers for the full suite of boards. When Musto was running the manufacturing, he may have been willing to run off small-quantities of the less popular boards "as needed" using spare plant capacity, but it would be harder to get manufacturers who are less "intimately involved" to agree to such ... irregularity. Back before the "re-unification", it almost looked like the .org contingent was purposely "flooding" the market with new designs that would need to be manufactured "irregularly." :frowning:

Has arduino.org supplied all the necessary documents for the open source boards and software?

If they haven't, do you think (as a customer/user) it would be better to discontinue those boards (or "product directions") or to struggle to re-create them?

I have a significant investment is Arduino boards and projects.
many of the project rely on the Ardiuno Yun and Arduino Yun Shield.

Definitely in the "high risk" category.
The Yun seemed to make sense in a pre-esp8266, pre-Raspberry world, when it was clear (from the home router industry) that you COULD manufacture that class of board for the same sort of end-user price as something much less capable (like Arduino Uno + WiFi shield.) Now, with many chip vendors offering low-cost WiFi modules, PLUS the ESP-series chips, it has become a lot easier to offer "arduino-style" IoT boards, without "linux" involved anywhere. I'd be just as happy to see all the unix-class arduino boards go away to the Raspberry-Pi/Beagle offerings, and have Arduino focus on the "deeply embedded" market. (except for this nagging feeling that even "deeply embedded" systems are going to end up running unix, eventually, just to get the security and encryption libraries. Sigh.) But I'm a bare-metal sort of guy.

shift to the Raspberry Pi Compute Modules.

The Compute Modules seem a bit risky themselves. You have to add quite a bit before you get something as useable as a Yun mini. A Pi Zero-W seems a better match. Except they seem to be more of an "attract-mode" marketing item than real product :frowning:
There are a bunch of non-arduino, but arduino-friendly, open source vendors who have intermediate products; like the Adafruit Feather series. (with usable schematics already released/etc.) At least with products that have already met the OSHW requirements, you can re-create anything that is discontinued, and have it manufactured yourself. (alas, by the time you get to Yun or Raspberry Pi complexity, "manufacture yourself" is not such an easy/cheap thing to do, even if you DO have all the needed technical data...)

westfw:
The Yun seemed to make sense

IMHO it only made sense until I got mine home and discovered the cock-up they had made of a very good idea.

Now it is sitting in some drawer somewhere. If I look after it then somebody may be able to auction it at Christies in 50 or a 100 years time. Pity I trashed the packaging.

As a more general comment I don't think any small "manufacturer" can have the sort of future security that the OP would like. I don't think this is just an Arduino problem.

It's a bit like wanting to preserve the view from your bedroom window. The ONLY way to guarantee it is to buy all the property that you want to look at. Similarly, if you want to continue using component X then buy a truckload of them now.

...R

Robin2:

It's a bit like wanting to preserve the view from your bedroom window. The ONLY way to guarantee it is to buy all the property that you want to look at. Similarly, if you want to continue using component X then buy a truckload of them now.

...R

Concerning the Yun, I will make do with the number i have. I am downgrading them away from anything Linino.
The Yun Shield is probably a discontinued product. It is no longer listed on the Arduino USA, Asia & Oceania Store.

The Raspberry Pi Zero is a toy, not for serious use.

The Raspberry Pi Compute module is not that bad, I have several all ready. Adding the necessary GPIO headers is the challenge.

I have looked at the banana-pi, stay away from that board. it is a scam.
I have looked at the orange-pi, not to bad just not a Raspberry PI.
I am waiting for the Raspberry Pi Version 4.

Concerning the neighborhood view.

I am surrounded by hundreds of acres of farmland. The fields are down now and I am looking a brown/tan stubble. Soon they will be plowed and i will be looking at black dirt till next spring. I pray for snow to cover the ground. These grey rainy damp days take a toll on me. trying to navigate a wheelchair in this weather is a challenge, especially when the hands are cold and damp. I really need an electric wheelchair but those are $$$$.

westfw:
I suspect that the current Arduino team is having difficulties lining up manufacturers for the full suite of boards. When Musto was running the manufacturing, he may have been willing to run off small-quantities of the less popular boards "as needed" using spare plant capacity, but it would be harder to get manufacturers who are less "intimately involved" to agree to such ... irregularity. Back before the "re-unification", it almost looked like the .org contingent was purposely "flooding" the market with new designs that would need to be manufactured "irregularly." :frowning:

If they haven't, do you think (as a customer/user) it would be better to discontinue those boards (or "product directions") or to struggle to re-create them?

When Arduino.cc took back Arduino.org didn't they also get the manufacturing facility? If so, we don't need contract manufacturers, we just need some reasonable management. Or did Musto destroy the tooling??

SurfingDude:
When Arduino.cc took back Arduino.org didn't they also get the manufacturing facility? If so, we don't need contract manufacturers, we just need some reasonable management. Or did Musto destroy the tooling??

Many of the arduino.org boards were never open souirce. Linino and doghunter (companies of F. Musto ) did not release the necessary files. The Arduino Tian is just one example. To produce the Arduino Tian would require it to be re-engineered from the beginning. Many of the Arduino.org files are in DSN format. the Schematics have errors and/or out-of-date.

Arduino.cc is not talking to the Arduino Community. They need to start talking now. If they are waiting till later there may not be an Arduino community left.

12 laser cut wood mounting boards for Arduino boards just disappeared from my shopping cart. No warning. Nothing. Just deleted.

My patience is wearing thin.

artisticforge:
My patience is wearing thin.

I don't mean this to sound unkind, but I think the problem is that you have been too patient. I would have given up 6 months ago.

I think you are expecting more from the Arduino supply chain than it is (or ever was) fit to deliver.

...R

I don't think any small "manufacturer" can have the sort of future security that the OP would like. I don't think this is just an Arduino problem.

It's not just an Arduino problem, and it's not just a "small company" problem either.
Any time you use a module-level component, you multiply the risk that that component will disappear completely MANY TIMES over using the basic components. And the basic components are at risk, too. We were designing a wonderful and expensive product based on a pre-release PPC microprocessor from "PA Semi". Did they fail? No, not really. Apple bought them, and their would-be products all disappeared :frowning: Z80s and 8051s are still around, but pity anyone who designed in a Nation Semiconductor "COP8", or a Scenix...

Likewise, the company spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out whether we should build a "thing" based on "commodity PC hardware" instead of the custom-built hardware we normally used. It was, potentially, a much cheaper solution, and some of our competitors were doing it. Eventually, we decided that "commodity PC hardware" had a product lifetime SO short that all the time we saved not designing our own HW would be spent "vetting" the latest version of the commodities :frowning:
(I've still got a fair amount of equipment designed to connect to a PC's parallel port. "hey, there will always be PCs, and they'll always have a parallel port!" Oops.)

We must look at the truth as it is and not as we would like it to be.

I think it's too easy to attribute all the wrongs to Musto, really too easy.
It's not only Musto boards that are not opensource, new arduino.cc too.
Are there copies on Ebay of the new cards?
No, then either there is no one to buy it or they are locked.

Are you wondering why the first Arduino boards with avr microcontroler were opensource?
Because Arduino is a fork of Wiring and Wiring boards existed before Arduino boards and were opensource, so no possibility of doing otherwise.
The first version of Arduino functions only included the adaptation to another avr micro that this used by Wiring.

It is time that Arduino agrees to recognize the truth about the project to re-start on a good basis.

The big risk will come from microcontroller designers who do not win money by selling boards but by selling microcontrollers that equip boards.
For them no matter who makes the boards, what matters is to sell larger number of micros as possible.

I think to ARM and its project Mbed as well as Espressif.