What’s Arduino and what can it do?

In the field of technology, informatic and robotic we often hear to talk about Arduino,  but what’s Arduino?

“Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy to use hardware and software”, exactly like the official web site explains.

Arduino is a small, cheap and versatile electronic card. But basically what does Arduino do? Everything you would like to let it does.

Arduino’s birth

Arduino is an electronic card fully italian, which with its simplness and versatility made its way in the world, becoming a really useful instrument for hobbysts, passionated and schools. But not only, even though its nature easy and cheap could relegate it to only educational and amateur purposes, in reality that’s wrong. Its strong suit is the versatility, and it’s right this that made it arrived in much more professional fields.

Like we said, Arduino was born in Italy, in the 2005, in the Ivrea Interaction Design, the post degree school which was born by the cooperation between Olivetti and Telecom Italia, with the purpose to give life to everyone ideas, by transforming them in reality and becoming a valid help in the realization of many projects.

This small card is so special that led its creators became the precursors of the fourth industrial revolution. To write the first libraries of Arduino were the students of the informatic engineering university.

Thanks to the great job Arduino has, still today, a smooth, easy and intuitive programing system. Being it open, then, the whole community could view and improve it, by creating an incredible number of libreries.

What does Arduino do?

“The Arduino software is easy-to-use for beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Teachers and students use it to build low cost scientific instruments, to prove chemistry and physics principles, or to get started with programming and robotics.

Designers and architects build interactive prototypes, musicians and artists use it for installations and to experiment with new musical instruments. Makers, of course, use it to build many of the projects exhibited at the Maker Faire, for example.

Arduino is a key tool to learn new things. Anyone – children, hobbyists, artists, programmers – can start tinkering just following the step by step instructions of a kit, or sharing ideas online with other members of the Arduino community.”.

Everyone can program with Arduino, through the Arduino Programing Language and the Arduino Software, by transforming the card, shaping it by letting it make whatever you want.

Its versatility allows it to interact with basically the whole Internet of Things, every sensor, both if it is about umidity, temperature, light, etc, every household appliance, everything.

We can use it to make the house lighting smart, to set up the coffee machine, because it will prepare the coffee every morning at the same time, we can deal with programing and robotic, by realizing small robots.

The incredible versatility makes its potentialities almost infinite, the only limit is the fantasy.

Some projects

The projects of Arduino are many and they included the whole Internet of Things, by transforming regular objects in extraordinary.

“It’s the kind of project that we find in the science fiction stories, the things that the gadget web sites write. What do all this things have in common? Those are all things that normally won’t be possible, things that normally we can only dream. But now those amazing ideas come to life, and probably won’t be engineering to realize them”.

It’s been converted into a gardener, by transforming a common greenhouse into a smart greenhouse. It thought about all: irrigation, windows’ opening, fertilisers, check of the soil and products’ conditions.

It’s been used to improve the safety: for example, by revealing the datas from the pollution’s sensors, it was able to close the air conductors, switch on the filters or switch of the machines.

Or even, it’s been transformed in a “sunflower”, which were moving toward the sun by bringing with it the solar panles, optimazing them. Were made self tie up shoes, programs which allowed to write on the PC by the only eyes’ movement, robots that prepare the tea or that help at home and so on.

Arduino is a real revolution that doesn’t seem to stop. Let’s go on creating, dreaming and realizing amazing things, the only limit is our imagination.

This post is also available in: Italiano