Building Arduino in the USA with Raspberry Pi
Our friends at Adafruit recently did a deal with some of our other friends at Arduino to build genuine licensed Arduino boards at their insanely awesome factory in downtown NYC. Arduino have been having a spot of bother with their original manufacturing partner recently, so this is great news.
Here’s a picture of Massimo Banzi from Arduino, the indomitable LadyAda and the very first USA Arduino UNO to come off the line.
Miscreants, up to mischief
PT shared this video of the rig they’re using to test and program each unit. It features a Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit PiTFT HAT, and can test and program an Arduino UNO in under 15 seconds, versus the 1 minute 37 seconds it took for their earlier rig. (See? We always said that Raspberry Pi and Arduino make a beautiful partnership.)
One of the most popular uses of Raspberry Pi outside of education is in factory automation. They crop up all over the place: monitoring and controlling things; as a low-cost, reliable alternative to traditional industrial controllers; in other test setups (Raspberry Pis made in Wales are also tested using – you guessed it – a Raspberry Pi); and now it’s being used to make more of something we love by some people we think are completely brilliant. We’re sending all our very best wishes to team Arduino and to team Adafruit across the Atlantic: if you want a genuine Arduino, Adafruit’s the place to get one!
10 comments
Alan McC
The story for some reason makes me think of Braveheart. Freedom! CC !
Great to see the cooperation : Arduino, Adafruit & Raspberry Pi – rowing together in the same direction ;o)
Homer L. Hazel
I am glad to see that the Raspberry Pi folks like the Adafruit folks. Adafruit is my preferred vendor in the United States. It seems to me that from the beginning they have embraced the Raspberry Pi.
paddy
Brilliant to see Banzi and LadyAda working together.
There’s possibly a salutary lesson for the Foundation here too: The hardware is not the thing. However much of a warm feeling it gives to see manufacturing in Italy, Wales or New York, if it can be made in the Far East for less that’s a reason to improve production efficiency, not screw down on Intellectual Property rights and restrictive practices. As I’m sure Martino and Musto will discover.
Clive Beale
Actually, the fact that our hardware is designed and manufactured in the UK – and that lots of jobs have been created because of this – gives us a very warm feeling indeed :) We’re not above learning lessons of course but we have been instrumental in forming many of them ;)
Jeff Findley
Agreed. At the current price points for the Raspberry Pi products, as a consumer, I can’t think of a single reason to ship production overseas and I can think of many reasons not to do so.
Tim
I’ve actually found Arduinos to be quite unreliable. We use them a lot at work and they frequently become unflashable. I’ve switched to mBed partly because of this (and also because the code and hardware is cheaper, faster and better). Too early to say how reliable mbed hardware is but none of my boards have failed yet.
AndyD
“Raspberry Pis made in Wales are also tested using – you guessed it – a Raspberry Pi”
So if we have a Raspberry Pi creating more of its own kind, does that mean that the Raspberry Pi Foundation will be the start of Skynet? :)
Liz Upton
We can but dream.
Wolfgang F. Muthmann
Yes! Our dreams will change the REAL world … some day …
Elfen
Unfortunately I find Adafruit to be too expensive for anything, and their lack of a brick and motar store to be a major problem. This is NYC! A store can little hole in the wall place and not even at ground level! Tinkersphere is where I go to for all my Raspberry Pi and Arduino needs. Great place, low prices, easy to get too, and a cute sales gal/store owner who knows her tech!
But the Arduino tester is a good idea. Out of the several I bought online, on 1 turned out dead, and it was not because of the ATMeta Chip. The USB Chip was either improperly soldered in or it was a dead chip. The ATMeta chip could be programmed by using a second Arduino set up as an ISP programmer but that complicates things.
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