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On http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software I am not seeing any donate button or erequest for donations.

Click the links to actually download. 5 of the 6 links, which used to cause a file to download now take you to a page soliciting donation. On that donation page, there's 2 links "Just Download" and "Contribute & Download". Clicking "Just Download" begins the actual download which used to occur from the downloads page link.

The Mac java7 version takes you to a page explaining why that version is different. The link on *that* page which used to begin the download now takes you to the donation page, with the "Just Download" and "Contribute & Download" buttons.

You won't see the donation stuff if you just casually look at the download page without actually clicking the links to download the files.
 
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That almost rings a bell from my 1.6.1 download as it makes you pause before you click. At least it isn't an "AD", or cross promotion kraapware checkboxes you have to uncheck like on Adobe PDF/Flash pages - yet.

I noticed Sparkfun doesn't seem to stock (or promote) the [aptly named] Zero - and it isn't listed on the .cc boards section either.

{{ this forum brought to you by PJRC - Please consider a donation and buy a Teensy today }}
 
Click the links to actually download.
The donation link talks about how they're going to use money to improve the IDE. I'd take their pleading for money more seriously if they took their own IDE more seriously. To me, it's the same cumbersome interface that it has been since 2009. They had all this time to add the option to have the files listed in a box to the side, which could show dozens of them, rather than just the tabs across the top, which can show... what, ten or so? And the serial console keeps closing itself when it uploads, and doesn't reopen itself afterwards, even though someone gave them a patch years ago? Going from the changelog, all they do is minor bugfixes, but the usability aspect is treated like it doesn't matter. Every IDE I've used this century has the file list on the side, at least as an option.
 
Interesting, Adafruit claim they had "a single digit number" to sell, but I think Adafruit are giving me complete BS. They are basically saying until the lawsuit is decided and tells them not to, they will keep selling stock from arduino.org as official Arduino products. AKA "it's not our problem". I imagine other distributors will take the same view.

I looked earlier in the afternoon or morning, and the AAE show is done live at 8pm EST/EDT on Wednesdays, so it could have sold out most of the items by 8pm (in the past, I have seen things completely sell out before the show). I'm surely not the only person who checks the Adafruit new products page early on Wednesdays, and if I decide I want the new doohicky and it lists a stock count (meaning they have less than 100 on hand), that I will order it then, forgoing the 10% off that you typically get on the night of the show if I expect something to sell out quickly. Similarly, on Friday mornings I check the Sparkfun site before their announcements go out (however, recently SF has had less and less of things that tempt me).
 
The About Us page is interesting, nearly all of those people claiming to work with users and developers etc I have never heard of. Are all those full-time employees? I suppose you need someone in charge of "Digital Strategy & Wearables", and other such things. Anyway, that seems like a large staff budget to keep up with.

The founder names I recognise, as also the names of the forum moderators. The forum moderators are not employees of Arduino, are they?

Yeah, I knew a Zoe once. Maybe that's the same person? J/K

What's with the lack of mention of people's last names?
 
Unlike Paul, I have no issue with a donation page for Arduino. In an ideal world, open source projects would get along swimmingly by being user funded without the need for sales of any kind. A wide base of supporters is usually preferable to a single source income. Other models include pimping trademarks or even manufacturing the hardware yourself (like Arduino did). The latter models get into trouble as soon as coubterfeiting becomes too easy.

Paul's model here is likely the best compromise in terms of assuring a income for the developer while not preventing others from developing their own solutions (via the sale of boot loader chips). It also gives Paul some control over who gets to compete with him using his own tools, i.e. Naughty competitors can be frozen out of the market.

I consider the 8 bit AVR market to be a lost cause for this business model unless the new boot loader chip revolutionizes aspects of the user experience in a way that is meaningful Maybe a new user interface with a debugger built in? Who knows but if I were Arduino LLC I would effect a transition to 32 bit pronto.
 
I'm still not sure how I really feel about the donation page. It's reasonable to at least ask people who've bought clones to support Arduino. And in these crazy times, if they're being hurt by the royalty payment dispute, hopefully it'll help while the court cases slowly move forward.

I guess, really, I have mixed feelings about continuing to link to their site. Especially since the claimed use the funds is improving the IDE. If you've bought a Teensy, you've already chipped in a very fair share towards continuing Arduino's IDE development! I contribute pretty substantially to the IDE and a lot of other Arduino stuff very few people see in its entirety. All that work is funded through sales of Teensy.
 
They had all this time to add the option to have the files listed in a box to the side, which could show dozens of them, rather than just the tabs across the top, which can show... what, ten or so?

I'm pretty sure they're very intentionally avoided the file lister. Sure, it's "standard" in all other IDEs. But look how complicated it is in most of them.


And the serial console keeps closing itself when it uploads, and doesn't reopen itself afterwards, even though someone gave them a patch years ago?

I've personally tested most of those patches. They work great with Arduino Uno, but so far every one has failed with Leonardo on at least one operating system (and usually all 3).

I recently implemented this for Teensy. It's not as easy as it looks. Perhaps at some point I'll port and test my code with Leonardo & Due (and Zero...) and contribute it. Or maybe someone else will do that, since it's all open source on github.

At the moment, I already have 2 major pull requests pending. I'm not so excited about submitting more stuff when they haven't approved (or rejected) my stuff already pending.


Going from the changelog, all they do is minor bugfixes, but the usability aspect is treated like it doesn't matter. Every IDE I've used this century has the file list on the side, at least as an option.

Is the only reason for this to allow more filenames to be display than the tabs?
 
Click the links to actually download. 5 of the 6 links, which used to cause a file to download now take you to a page soliciting donation.

Oh wow. I had moused over the links and see they went to .zip etc but didn't try to dowload them. You are right, they redirect.

THIS IDE IS NO LONGER JUST FOR ARDUINO BOARDS.
Oh, okay. Yet somehow no non-Arduino boards are preinstalled with it.

HUNDREDS OF COMPANIES AROUND THE WORLD ARE USING IT TO PROGRAM THEIR DEVICES, INCLUDING COMPATIBLES, CLONES, AND EVEN COUNTERFEIT.

A bit brash. And a big change from "buy an Arduino board and you support development of Arduino" which was their sales pitch until very recently. They have been complaining about clones for a while (odd, since their choice of license explicitly permits cloning for commercial gain) - mention of counterfeits is new though.
 
While I may sound harsh, I think we are seeing the beginning of the wind down to eventual death of Arduino.
(At least the fully open model with support by Arduino LLC)
Many factors are all combining to create a perfect storm.

I still believe that most of this driven from the fact that you can't survive as an organization if you
- don't have a corporate sponsor to pay all the bills
- need income to support the organization
- give away everything to allow competitors to cannibalize your revenue with very little upfront and zero support costs

Voluntarism and altruism only go so far and at the end of the day, the world is based on money and capitalism,
so even if you are a charitable organization, you still need money to pay for certain support costs.

So in my view what is really happening is that the unsustainable "open source" business model is finally catching up with Arduino.

It will be interesting to see if Arduino can pivot into something more sustainable or whether it will slide down into the abyss.
I think the biggest challenge right now for Arduino LLC, is for them to figure out what they want to do/be, and then how to make that work as a real sustainable business.


--- bill
 
While I may sound harsh, I think we are seeing the beginning of the wind down to eventual death of Arduino.
(At least the fully open model with support by Arduino LLC)...

Voluntarism and altruism only go so far and at the end of the day, the world is based on money and capitalism,
so even if you are a charitable organization, you still need money to pay for certain support costs.

So in my view what is really happening is that the unsustainable "open source" business model is finally catching up with Arduino.
--- bill

Very interesting to note the difference in Arduino's oversight people and methods as compared to those of Raspberry Pi.
 
Part of the reason that the project and the company may have evolved the way it did was through its history. IIRC, they started off with a grant from the EU and when the funding ran out, they decided to publish the results pretty much into the public domain. This may have shaped not only their thinking re: how to organize themselves but also who'd be interested in this sort of an organization. That in turn has an impact on the drive, direction, etc. of the business once it did take off.

Paul started off with an entirely different situation, i.e. this was going to be a business that would be his primary income. His product would have to be differentiated and sustainable in the face of an onslaught of counterfeiters. As I see it, the primary reason that Paul has such an ardent following is not just because he has designed some excellent hardware and software... it's because he actually replies to forum entries himself, providing consistent tech support.

Over in Arduino-land, the gods behind the code are largely absent from the user forums. They largely rely on volunteers to do the yeoman's work of answering tech support questions, figuring out bugs and so on. It's hence largely unsurprising that festering issues like the SPI bus situation, strings, and so on were allowed to retard the growth of the platform for as long as they have. I bet that if the software coders were required to answer tech support questions that their frustration with the String class would have led to a much faster resolution of the malloc() issue, for example.

I'll give you a comparison to real life engineering in a well-run company I have toured. In one factory, the engineering team is required to hop on the line and make product when demand is high. Hence, the engineers designing the product have a direct stake in ensuring that the product is easy to assemble. In another factory, the owners took this a step further by allowing the floor personnel to determine where the engineers got to work. Self-preservation goes a long way towards designing a good product. Similarly, back when I actively ran a web-site, I took every clarification question as a challenge to write a better web-page description of whatever I was trying to describe.

So for Arduino LLC to survive in the long run, I expect they will have to change their mission somewhat and perhaps choose the same path as Paul in ensuring that they actually get paid. But for that model to work, they will also have to step up and provide a better product than they have so far. The evolution of the Arduino IDE reminds me largely of MS Word - lots of stuff going on behind the scenes but the improvements are largely ceremonial. I'd really like to see the code base evolve quicker with more focus on supporting the paid user base than employing online media strategists and the like.

Spoken as an engineer, I suppose.
 
FWIW, I put in a 6.5 hour production shift (testing & packaging) the day before we released Teensy-LC. Robin was also working on shipping almost all day. ;)
 
Paul posted the updated .cc about us - that is in stark contrast to this: http://arduino.org/about-us

Scary to think the devs behind Arduino.cc are so far removed. Reading from the end of my post - I assume they were masters of the 8 bit MCU and what the UNO represented when they started - but without the expertise and motivation of a 'Paul' could only give minimal support to the power a 32 bit Teensy & DUE class platform?

Impressive how hands on Paul is with all elements - building/ordering/understanding even obscure hardware as needed to test/resolve issues (recent Lidar Lite) - making a list of issues and marching through them while moving forward on so much else current & future - with interaction on the forum and contributors.

I got my Teensy 3.1's for the raw horsepower I knew I would need, and set them aside not knowing the level of support they had, stayed with wimpy AVR assuming them running a higher 'beta' IDE meant they were more tuned in. As noted here the IDE stagnation means that was a false metric - it's the libraries and support. I came to frustration on those AVR's and needing the power came back here when a search asking '1.6.0 support?' hit forum.PJRC and came on the day Paul announced imminent 1.6.0 beta that I saw hours later. And have been nothing but stunned by Paul&Forum contributor support and end product stability and functionality!

WORD is a bit different in that the DEV folks spend their time coding, not 'mail merging'. In Paul's case and in OS dev/test folks know and see the problems at hand because they live it (at least when it was all on one floor).

Arduino as I understand it started filling a small unique nitch for the folks that made it work for them. And it seems have been risk averse to breaking that connection, or too comfortable at the level they reached. The IDE needs of those initial adopters - while part of the Teensy Mission - is different from the High end audience Teensy can reach - maybe that is why DUO fell so flat and the ZERO may not fare much better. Hardware debug on ZERO won't help if there isn't a working toolset and an audience that can use it, and competent folks (others here) just hook up an O-Scope and build a few spare test circuits to track the failure to its source, or infer from the hardware specs and docs. And with working libraries properly used - few people need 'hardware debugging'.

The Forum rule 'complete code & details' from a simple demonstrative example means that many can solve their own problem 'cleaning/reducing' code to be representative, and at least when they don't the time to debug and resolve are minimized.

If I had one teensy complaint** it would be documentation of the cool and complex libraries - but developer(s) writing docs aren't writing code - and they are also probably miserable (at doing it and having to do it). This might also touch on a problem for Arduino - they probably spend more time documenting and keeping the web up to date than they do writing new code that could in anyway break/alter existing behavior - and as we can see [.cc .vs. .ORG] (unlike Paul) the current software folks did not get to pick/build the hardware - and have to live around their form factor.

Some relation to BGates software control versus IBM's hardware control and SUN/Apple who tried to control both. Apple too almost went bankrupt until MSFT invested and instead they became profitable again, mostly selling 'locked down' phones - that make people buy iPads and now iWatches and iCables and i_?$?$.

So Arduino_ORG profits are limited by clones, and Arduino.cc gives away their software. Paul indeed developed a great model that only survives with his great continuous effort, and high value and quality bootloader execution.

Would a paid high end IDE be the answer? Isn't that what VisualMicro is working on?

**: I'll post my Audio FFT question soon - and if I phrase it right I'm sure I'll quickly get to what is possible. But even Teensy evolution and past support hinders the understanding of the 3.1 and now LC on PJRC.com. Is there a source tree walker that creates a doc trail of functions/variable/values?
 
Part of the reason that the project and the company may have evolved the way it did was through its history. IIRC, they started off with a grant from the EU and when the funding ran out, they decided to publish the results pretty much into the public domain"
Well, that explains a lot. So from its very origin. Arduino was not a business. And that is its problem.

No business can survive if it gives away all it is IP and then gives free support to any competitor that takes that IP and builds competing products.
 
Paul, it may be time privately to think about life after the Arduino IDE. Either by forking the source or by possible moving to a different IDE as the base (providing current IDE as a lesser maintained backup).

I'm not sure how practical not linking to the Arduino.cc is (due to them asking for donations) if you require users to use Arduino 1.0.6 or 1.6.1 to be installed before they can install Teensydunio. Now, back in the day when we had the GCC/EGCS split happened, those of us on the EGCS side were careful to keep the same requirements for developers (mainly donating the copyright to the FSF). This allowed us to rejoin back with what was left of GCC after the various fences were mended, and new checkin rules adapted. Similarly, even if you fork the Arduino IDE, keep whatever requirements is needed for donating code to the Arduino IDE in place, so that you could merge back again.

I do think groups can get complacent, and sometimes you need something horrific to happen to spur people back to work for a common good.
 
Arduino IDE is about as bare bones as you can get, and I doubt that ever changes.

I know some people don't like Eclipse, but it is open-source and it's far, far better than Arduino IDE.
I do find eclipse a little frustrating in setting it up for multiple languages and platforms.

But, packaging up a specific setup of eclipse I think would be the way to go. Google does this for their android sdk which is just a pre-configured eclipse with their sdk integrated. Before it used to be an eclipse plugin requiring a cumbersome setup. Now it just works.
Better yet, if you could have a specific eclipse IDE for arduino, and another for Processing. That just makes so much sense.
 
I noticed that the arduino.org download page now has a version for Zero Pro (and they don't ask for donations :)).

What tickled me was on their "Contact Us" page:

Support

Do you think your Arduino board has a bug? support@arduino.org

(specifying the model, serial number, version of the operating system of the Arduino software and where you bought it)

Trademarks

Would you like to report a trademarks violation? trademarks@arduino.org

Although Massimo Banzi says "hey community, we need to talk", he just dumps his spiel then we never hear from him again. No response to any of the comments. Sadly that is symptomatic of the Arduino experience that people describe above. It is not clear what he is asking of the community, apart from "just pretend everything is business as usual".

Perhaps the new reality is that arduino.org will build the hardware, and arduino.cc will do software and services. If they can survive like that, it doesn't really matter in the end who does what.

Personally, I feel I have spent too much time on a platform that is highly underwhelming - poor IDE, underpowered hardware, poor maintenance etc, and now no clear direction. To be fair, it was not intended for people like me. The only reason I got involved with Arduino is because most of the open source 3d printer firmwares are based around Arduino.

Professionally, mbed would be more use to me, has better hardware and more powerful software. The only bad point is the insane idea of an online compiler, although there are workarounds.

If Teensy was supported by a proper IDE, Eclipse or otherwise, I think that would be a great idea. I worked on one large Arduino project in Eclipse, the setup was a bit tedious, but once done worked well.
 
As much as I want to do All The Things, I really don't think it's very realistic for me to get heavily involved in another IDE. Or even much more than I already am in Arduino's IDE. At least not yet.

I do hope to work more with Jantje (Eclipse plugin) and Tim (Visual Micro). They've already done a lot of great work. I don't see any reason to compete with them, but maybe there's some ways I could help more?

It's also possible we'll see some improvements on the Arduino IDE. Yeah, I know how unlikely that sounds. But there's a developer in Brazil who's done some nice work lately for online docs and other editor features. I have a few things planned too. Whether any of this stuff ever makes its way into the IDE published by Arduino.cc or Arduino.org is a good question. If not, I'll very likely put it into Teensyduino. But my preference is to contribute major stuff upstream to Arduino, if they're willing to accept it.

I think it's also important to keep some perspective. Teensy is only a tiny part of the very large "Arduino market". I try to do as much as I can with the resources I have, but ultimately there are limits....


As unfortunate as this Arduino conflict is, on the plus side it does seem to be spurring the Arduino.cc folks to really rethink how they communicate. I agree, their neglect of their own forums isn't good. On that thread, I think Massimo could have (and still could) gain a lot more respect by just posting a couple followups, even if only "I want to say more, but lawyers."

It's still too early to tell, but recent activity on github seems like this terrible situation might also be driving them to finally improve the IDE in ways people have wanted for years. Maybe. I think in another month or two, the trend will become much clearer.

Regarding the conflict, I want to support Arduino.cc, and I really don't ever want to be involved with any organization run by Federico Musto.
 
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People seeking the Teensy 3/LC are in the top tier of techies - distinct from the wearables and those sort of users. Many have used Visual Studio for C# and C/C++.

Have you spoken to Tim of Visual Micro lately? As you know, he said, in so many words, he isn't inclined to support Teensy 3/LC for Arduino 1.6 becuase the ARM core support code was put underneath the AVR directory tree. The SAM based ZERO for Arduino 1.6 is properly in its own directory. Apparently, having both AVR and Teensy-ARM in the AVR directories would cause him too much rework of Visual Micro.

Personally, I feel that Eclipse is too unintuitive and over-bloated, for even most advanced users. I have used it extensively for over a year, and still dislike it - to understate.
But Visual Studio/Visual Micro is Windows based and some few are anti-windows no matter the user demographics.



Another plug-in for Visual Studio (Free) is visualGDB. It targets ARM. I found it to be excellent. It's $90 and well worth it.

As reported here I do have Visual Studio 2013 Community + Visual Micro, both FREE, running for Arduino 1.6 after some minor changes. It's not what it needs to be as compared to Visual Micro for Arduino 1.0.x. The new Teensyduino menu items such as speed and optimizer choices don't get ingested. That's OK for many of us, for now.

I'm in the camp that says a decent IDE is a must-have. A bare bones text editor without intellisense and equals, is is just not adequate, for so many reasons.
 
Hi, I have been distributing Arduino in the Netherlands since 2009. Back in February I got a mail from Gianluca, the arduino organisation was evolving: fabrication and distribution were going to change a little, no further explanation. I thought it was fine. New distributor webshop, new contacts at distribution centre. some startup trouble but the ordered boards came through without problems. I did not notice the change to arduino.org (did not pay real attention to it). All distributors have a contract with smartprj for distributing arduino hardware and none of us knew about the problems...(at least I didn't ) not a single message, not from Gianluca, not from Massimo or others. That's a bit weird isn't it? I thought my sales were contributing the arduino team... Would like to hear gianluca's side of the story but I don't like it so far...
 
I'm in the camp that says a decent IDE is a must-have. A bare bones text editor without intellisense and equals, is is just not adequate, for so many reasons.

IMO, All depends on the audience. The few of us that program computer since Z80, while enjoying TurboPascal derivatives (I wanted to say IDE) have no problem with terminals, text editors and make. I had to program this way for many years. On the other side, there seems to be a tendency to develop custom versions for every processor family. For my TI dsps I should use CCS, for the Kinetis Freedom boards KDS, for the PC I have Qt, etc. Consequently, I prefer systems that come without IDE and give me a user-ready makefile, but I still use an IDE when necessary.

Having said that, I reccon that, when we get a Teensy with debug facility, all simplistic approaches, e.g my notepad++ development system, become inadequate when compared to debug-enabled IDE. Which one to choose will depend on the available debug concept.
 
I do hope to work more with Jantje (Eclipse plugin) and Tim (Visual Micro). They've already done a lot of great work. I don't see any reason to compete with them, but maybe there's some ways I could help more?

I don't see this as competing. I think all it needs to be is a packaging thing. For eclipse, one would need to figure out how to package eclipse, so that the plugin is pre-installed, and have the configuration optimized for beginners (you don't want to make it too daunting the first time opening it).

One could install the pre-configured eclipse, OR install the plugin separately into their own version of eclipse. This is how the Google Android Developer Tool worked.

I find the separate instance of eclipse for every type of project works better, cause I know any changes I make to it are for whatever platform I'm working on.

I started googling to see how the ADT was made, but I'm not finding much yet.
 
Who knows but if I were Arduino LLC I would effect a transition to 32 bit pronto.
I don't know why they haven't made this leap already. 8 bits with 2K RAM vs. 32 bits with 64K RAM is not a big price increase. In fact, you can get MINI54TANs (Teensy 3.1) for $1.91 a chip in big lots (DigiKey), and the ATMega328 for $1.79 in comparable lots (Mouser). What is 12 cents on a product that is sold for $25-30? Enough to justify the EXPONENTIAL difference in capability? That 12 cents is WAAAAAY out of scale with the gigantic penalty it buys. I can understand some people will have legacy code, written in hand-tuned assembly, like the WS2812 driver, that would not work on a different architecture - but such code can, and has been, ported. That's the price of us not all using the abacus forever. The abacus never needs an upgrade, but we need an upgrade from the abacus!!!

I'm pretty sure they're very intentionally avoided the file lister. Sure, it's "standard" in all other IDEs. But look how complicated it is in most of them. [...] Is the only reason for this to allow more filenames to be display than the tabs?
Yes, absolutely. For me, different locations in the code are handled by my mind in the same way that real-world locations would be. As I build the codebase from scratch, my mind makes a note of how to get to different parts of it, in the same way it would make note of geographical features if I was walking around outside. This all happens automatically, without conscious intervention. My goal is to be able to navigate the codebase intuitively, to let my subconscious do all the pathfinding by itself. If I have to recruit conscious resources to do that pathfinding, it means I have to dump part of what my short-term memory is primed with, which means I lose some momentum and have to get it back later. Arduino's IDE makes me do a lot of that. In fact, rather than summoning the dropdown list of files, I will usually just use ctrl+left/right to cycle between the tabs until I think I have the right one, and then scroll until I see a ClassName:: signature to verify I'm in the right file. My kinesthetic sense of where the files are in relation to one another, is literally easier to traverse, than the action of summoning the file list and finding the file there.

By contrast, most of the development I do for Teensy these days is in SublimeText with the Arduino plugin. Sublime has the usual list of files to the left. When I want to switch to a new file, I NEVER use a keyboard shortcut to cycle to the next one, because ALL the files are in that box, ALL THE TIME. My mind is used to a single action: look left, file is in this approximate location, scan that location, find the exact file, click, and done. In Sublime, the presence of that box gives me an easier, less expensive map to follow than the keyboard shortcuts. I have to give up less of the stuff I've primed my short-term memory with, and that helps me work better.

I can just imagine the people who wrote Repetier or Marlin 3D printer firmware, trying to do that with the Arduino IDE. They both have enough files that Arduino will run out of tab space. All the stupid clicking of that stupid dropdown button. I spent about an hour researching an alternate IDE, and would have spent more, just because of how irritating that interface decision is. That one-second action bothers me so much that I spent an hour figuring out how to get away from it.

Maybe other developers have brains that will handle that interface more easily, so maybe they don't see the need for a box on the side. Personally, I can't stand it. As I'm not a space alien, I think probably a lot of developers react to it in the same way that I do.
 
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