Need help with forum stats

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Bar Sport
#1

Everyone,

I’m trying to do a quick comparison study on the popularity of arduino vs. other major hobbyist-fueled microcontrollers. I need to find out when this very forum started. Can someone help?

Also if you’re a member of microchip’s forum, can you ask that the same over there?

Also if you’re a member of parallax’s forum, can you ask that the same over there?

Here’s what I have already, I just need when the forums started. Any suggestions corrections are very welcome!

Google search hits
“basic stamp” 837,000
“PIC microcontroller” 2,290,000
“arduino” 3,780,000

Microchip forum (maker of PIC) 43041 registered users have made 519756 posts within 90893 topics.

Arduino forum (designer of Arduino) 32248 registered users have made 297829 posts within 42877 topics.

Parallax forum (maker of basic stamp) 21,058 registered users have made 491,577 posts within 64,950 topics.

Also comments on when basic stamp and pic got popular are needed.

Thank you! ;D

#2

Ugh…it’s always tough to get statistics right. For example, someone might just search “microchip PIC” instead of “PIC microcontroller”. And who’s to say that more posts means more popularity on a forum? Perhaps it just means people are having more problems…

Anyways, it’ll be interesting to see what the numbers show.

–
The Quick Shield: breakout all 28 pins to quick-connect terminals

#3

I believe the Parallax Forum started as a dial-up bulletin board system which is going to make it nearly impossible for you to compare it to the other two forums.

Is there a reason you’re not including AVR Freaks? Or Lady Ada’s forum?

#4

It’s not scientific, but Google trends loves arduino:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=arduino%2C+pic+microcontroller%2C+basic+stamp%2C+microchip+pic&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

The very first forum member was massimo_banzi on 7/21/2005, from the ‘members’ section

#5

Adafruit’s arduino forum is relatively small. I was just doing a qualitative comparison. It seems that arduino has a similar sized fan circle as PIC or basic stamp. That’s all I wanted to know.

OK, so PIC has got a long history. How about basic stamp? I know Arduino only has 5 years and is this popular. This probably enough for me.

#6

Before “forums”, there were mailing lists.

The earliest messages I have easily findable in my mail archives are from 1994 for both the PIC mailing list and the Stamp Mailing list. Those are from the middle of conversations, so that’s not when they first started…

#7

The arduino is just an AVR dev board, so avr’s are a whee bit older than 5 years…

#8