Strange question but I can't find the answer to it.
What is the company name that designed and produces the original Arduinos? I know they are open source and anyone can make them, but there is a company that came up with them first and still produces them. I don't think it is called "The Arduino Company". Who is it?
While at it, anyone know the name of the company that mades the original Raspberry Pi's?
Just curious,
Thanks,
Drew
The original Arduino company split into two, arduino.cc and arduino.org. They each own the trademark in different countries and are disputing ownership in some countries. You can find out more of this sort of general info about Arduino and Raspberry Pi on wikipedia.
who designed and produces the original Arduinos?
Note that "designing" and "producing" are two different things. It's very common in high-tech industries for a product to be designed by one company, but actually manufactured by a "contract manufacturer." So iPhones are designed by Apple and manufactured by Foxconn. Sometimes there are three or more companies involved - software development (at least at the lower levels) will be farmed out as well.
So, at the time of the FIRST "original arduinos", there weren't really any "companies" involved. Just some individuals who designed some hardware, had some PCBs made, and maybe sold them to students and hackers who were interested, and made the designs available for other people to use as well. Then things caught on, people were looking at real money (both "to be made" and "needing to be spent"), and it got more complicated.
But arduino.cc and arduino.org are website or domain names, but not company names. Is the actual name of those companies "Arduino Inc" or Arduino LLC? or is the actual name of the companies something totally unrelated. I seriously doubt that Raspberry Pi's are made by Raspberry Pi Inc.
I ask because actually I am in the process of starting a small company that will make a board. So we were just going in the direction of making our board and our company have the same same, when I said "Well, Arduino's aren't made by Arduino LLC and Raspberry Pi's are made by Raspberry Pi Inc." So that got me trying to find the actual name of the companies that make the boards and oddly enough, I can't find that information anywhere, not even wikipedia.
Thanks
The company names are Arduino LLC and Arduino SRL who are currently in dispute over the name Arduino.
By make do you mean manufacturer?
The manufacturers of the boards are described a little in the Wikipedia articles. For Arduino it is Arduino SRL, Adafruit, SparkFun, and a couple of companies not mentioned in Wikipedia yet are Seeed and Gravitech.
I think normally a company will own a trademark and arrange for manufacturing by licensing to or collaborating with an external company. So the company name, the brand name of the product, and manufacturer are often different. Plus the designing company may start to make a different board and call that new board something else, creating another trademark. For example, Arduino LLC has now created Genuino. So things can get complicated.
if you wish to have your board manufactured by a third party, look /google for some contract manufacturers in your area.
Depending on your volume, some smaller, more modest companies might be more suitable.
You will obviously need to provide complete manufacturing information like BOM, AVL (depending as to who does the sourcing), test plans, debugging tips, etc.....
It is no more economical to build board ourselves, thus the use of CM's (contract manufacturers) like Sanmina, Celestica, Foxconn. I think Arrow might offer such a service but I am not sure
Google is your friend : electronic assembly manufacture service
dan
Arduino is Open Source. You are encouraged to make your own stand-alone duinos on this site.
But we buy official boards to support what comes with them free.