7

LENS

HackSpace Can you tell us about the
Arduino debugger?

FV We worked quite heavily on the debugger side
and now we have a working back end for that.
We’re working with our UX designers to create a
simple front end, to make it accessible for people
who are not really sophisticated code developers.
I’m pushing quite a bit on this because it’s an
important development and Arduino was missing
this for a long time.

HackSpace Will it work on older boards?

FV We’re trying to make it more comprehensive

• we have some boards that are very limited, but
  we’re trying to do a good job on that. The idea is to
  be as inclusive as we can. In some cases there are
  limitations on the hardware that make it impossible
  to do that, but we are trying to do whatever we can
  to cover the widest range of use cases.
  The other thing we are doing, as far as
  development is concerned, is that today, many
  Arduino users are forced to go and connect to
  different clouds, so we worked heavily on what
  we called the Arduino Things Cloud, which is part
  of our IoT strategy. In that area we made a lot of

progress in making a super-stable back end that

can connect the end nodes to the cloud, and we’re

going to release some of these capabilities in June.

We are also working with the user experience of

data in the cloud, for users to build dashboards and

applications – they can be simple applications but

also more complex ones. This is a path that is also

part of our strategy.

We are putting a lot of effort in this area as

well – allowing people to connect to third-party

clouds – but we are trying to remove the trouble

of connecting devices to the cloud from end-node

security, up to having the data on the cloud and

creating dashboards. This is an important part of

our strategy.

We were a little bit late to the game, but

we’re tying to make it simple for users and this

is probably the most important differentiator for

[Arduino] users, especially the professional ones.

I think the community from Raspberry Pi is more

inclined to using cloud services and high-level

complex software. The Arduino community comes

more from the embedded world, or they are

designers and makers – even professional users

in SMEs don’t have all the knowledge to use the

cloud, so we would like to simplify the path for that

so it’s complementary to the software.

DEBUG HAPPY

The Arduino development environment hasn’t

changed a lot over the years, and while this

stability is great, it can leave it a bit sparse.

The debugger will make it much easier to

find out what’s going on in your code, and is,

frankly, long overdue. The IDE will still split

opinion – the simplistic interface remains,

which still lacks features for managing larger

projects, but that’s OK: there will probably

never be a development environment that

will please everyone and you can develop for

Arduino from other environments.

THE HACKSPACE VIEW

After a bit of a slow start, Arduino is finally

catching up with the modern, connected world,

and it’s great to see this supported fully from

encryption chips on the boards to a back end

that’s easy to use. Up until now, the whole

solution has been bitty, requiring users to use, and

understand, quite a range of different platforms.

With the new Arduino Things back end, users will

just be able to get a board, connect it to the local

WiFi network and their online account, and then

push data back and forth. It should make it much

easier to create connected devices.

In the last year or so, we’ve seen the first real

challengers gain a foothold against Arduino’s

dominant position in the field of hobbyist

microcontroller development environments.

Circuit and MicroPython, MakeCode, and others

are now becoming popular (at least in some

fields). We’re now seeing Arduino respond to this

challenge, and it’s making a strong case for itself,

particularly in connected devices.

From both a hardware and software

perspective, there’s never been a better time to

get into embedded computing. The hardware and

software feel fantastically powerful compared to

where they were just a few years ago. Watch this

space – Arduino is taking off.

Right

Andrea Richetta,

Product Manager,

shows of the MKR

Wifi 1010

FORZA ARDUINO!