Arduino is a single-board microcontroller designed to make the process of using electronics in multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open source hardware board designed around an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, though a new model has been designed around a 32-bit Atmel ARM. The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and a boot loader that executes on the microcontroller.
Arduino boards can be purchased pre-assembled or as do-it-yourself kits. Hardware design information is available for those who would like to assemble an Arduino by hand. It was estimated in mid-2011 that over 300,000 official Arduinos had been commercially produced
In 2005, a project was initiated to make a device for controlling student-built interactive design projects that was less expensive than other prototyping systems available at the time. Founders Massimo Banzi and David Cuartielles named the project after Arduin of Ivrea and began producing boards in a small factory located in Ivrea, a town in the Province of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy — the same region as the computer company Olivetti.
The Arduino project is a fork of the open source Wiring platform[4] and is programmed using a Wiring-based language (syntax and libraries), similar to C++ with some slight simplifications and modifications, and a Processing-based integrated development environment (IDE).
Arduino was built around the Wiring project of Hernando Barragan. Wiring was Hernando's thesis project at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. It was intended to be an electronic version of Processing that used our programming environment and was patterned after the Processing syntax. It was supervised by myself and Massimo Banzi, an Arduino founder. I don't think Arduino would exist without Wiring and I don't think Wiring would exist without Processing. And I know Processing would certainly not exist without Design By Numbers and John Maeda.
—Casey Reas, Interview by Daniel Shiffman
In September 2006, the Arduino Mini was announced.
In October 2008, the Arduino Duemilanove was announced. It was initially based on the Atmel ATmega168, then later shipping with the ATmega328.
In March 2009, the Arduino Mega was announced. It is based on the Atmel ATmega1280.
As of May 2011, more than 300,000 Arduino units were in use around the world.
In July 2012, the Arduino Leonardo was announced. It is based on the Atmel ATmega32u4.
In October 2012, the Arduino Due was announced. It is based on the Atmel SAM3X8E, which has an ARM Cortex-M3 core.
In November 2012, the Arduino Micro was announced. It is based on the Atmel ATmega32u4.
In May 2013, the Arduino Robot was announced. It is based on the Atmel ATmega32u4 and is the first official Arduino on wheels.
In May 2013, the Arduino Yún was announced. It is based on the Atmel ATmega32u4 and on the Atheros AR9331, and is the first wifi product combining Arduino with Linux
