Reverse engineering, a.k.a. looking at something. Now illegal, brought to you by capitalism
Without reverse engineering, there is no security. No way to find new bugs and vulnerabilities or confirm it’s backdoor free. Just blind trust only.
It offers protection from crackers and cybergangs too, because they always follow laws. /s
Reverse engineering prohibitions are the dumbest things.
Let’s say I do this. Arduino sues me. Okay. Now what? What money are they going to take?
Hell, this would be a perfect time for everyone to form an LLC and purchase Arduinos as the LLC and then release your research under your corporate name as CC0. If your LLC has no revenue, you as an individual are legally protected.
Arduino can try to put the genie back in the bottle but good luck.
Better companies than Arduino have tried to prevent hardware reverse engineering and have failed. Apple being the biggest company I can think of that have tried to sue people for releasing schematics of their motherboards.
They can’t take your money but they can bury you into the ground and use you as an example so that no one ever tries to do the same thing. Ever heard of Aaron Schwartz?
Maybe it’s just what I’ve been noticing, but I feel like Arduino was already losing its share of the hobbyist market. The plethora of small, cheap esp32 devices have already been taking Arduino’s place.
Same with raspberrypi really.
companies just can’t seem to know how to grow without line go up mentality.They seem to forget that “line go up” isn’t the primary objective. If you make a good product and give half a shit about your customers, the line goes up as a natural consequence.
Yes, but line go up fast enough?
Line go brrrr?
Also rp2040 devices.
I’m getting into meshtastic and learned how those esp32 devices are everywhere! They seem pretty neat
Nice! I have a couple too. There’s a community if your interested:
Hey thanks! I was wondering what my alternatives were. Bought RPis, having remembered that name from a decade ago, and then read the posts here about how those are getting worse. Glad to see something that could take their place for my next project :) This is the kind of stuff I come to programming.dev for.
There are clones now more open than arduino that we can buy. In addition esp32 and other small boards are awesome.
But how many of those esp32s are programmed using the Arduino IDE and Arduino libraries?
Many. But there too, I’m seeing many people move to VScode + platformio. I’m not saying Arduino is already dead, I’m just saying that the alternatives were already gaining ground.
I program my EPS32s in micropython anyway.
I love the ESP32, was onboard with the ESP-8266 (might have the numbers wrong, it was the predecessor), but I thought the real difference between the ESP-32 and the Rpi was that the Rpi has an OS with a possible desktop even (and all that Libux has to offer basically), as the ESP is more of a uProcessor you program in C/C++?
Edit: Plesse disregard, I mixed up the posts and posted one levet too high too…
To answer your question anyway, raspberry Pi made the rp2040 chip, which is a microcontroller similar to the esp, instead of a full fat computer SOC
I mean, it’s either that or a vendor-independent ecosystem. And this rarely gets fostered by vendors.
Arduino is dogshit, I will not elaborate.
Arduino has its place for self-taught hobbyists. For a lot of projects, a simple code is more than enough, so there is no point of going into the more advanced mcu like esp32 or stm32.
Not since the pi pico came out.
It’s cheaper, more capable, and you can still use arduino code if you want.I can find an arduino nano clone for 3$. There are use case for ultra cheap electronics like that.
Sure, but you can do better for $3. Smaller, more powerful, similar power consumption
I am not in the US. Seeed shipping would kill me
You are not wrong. Took a trip down that path for a friend, helping him create some items, which was frustratingly limited.
It is, however, super easy if you don’t want/need much.
I hate to see options disappear, even if we have other reasonable options available.
Thank you for your service
I was always surprised why the TI line of MSP430s didn’t take better. Guess their marketing was bullshit 🤷.
All the open hardware and software and ecosystem was pretty cool. It was cool you could just buy hats, or whatever they’re called, to add functionality, rather than designing a custom PCB and spending hundreds of dollars to get a few boards made and populated. I’m not a fan of their software stack or their choice of uC’s, but they did make it easy to just kind of plug stuff together in hardware and software.
Arduino has been irrelevant for a while. There are better alternatives for everything they offer. For a start, take a look at Raspberry Pi’s microcontrollers.
Up next: Raspberry foundation enshitification.
There are already several places chomping at the bit to unseat them as the SBC default.
The closest they’ve come so far is prioritizing industrial customers and compute modules for a while during a chip shortage, to my memory. Hopefully they stick to their roots in the hobbyist/educational sector.
To be fair, if most of your funding (source needed) comes from industrial customers, not supplying them is a good way to lose their patronage.
So even if it sucked for hobbyists at that moment, keeping a big player like RbP viable for the long term might not be too bad of a tradeoff.
I stay away from all the micro tech drama and I feel like two years ago, that community was bitching that raspberry pi sold out and everyone should switch to arduino.
I don’t have a side. I just pick whatever is easiest to make a emulation station.
RbP created a publicly traded company for their hardware, which is almost-wholly-held by Raspberry Pi Foundation, which is a charity.
That sort of thing ought not be allowed, ever. It’s similar to the path Arduino took to get here. There are still other competitors, but for the time being I’m happy enough with RbPi’s dirt-cheap microcontrollers. Their mini-PCs are a different story. We’re already seeing enshittification and price gouging there. It’s just a matter of time.
I agree that it shouldn’t be allowed. But for what it’s worth, a lot of non-profits that have a product do this. Mozilla for instance.
Yeah, I remember when the prices were high for a raspberry pi, I think it was $45, I went on Newegg and found a full size motherboard for $50. I mean, if you are looking for small that’s no good, but if cheap was all you were going for at that time, the pi wasn’t that great.
You can also use the Arduino hardware without their IDE or libraries. You just need avr-gcc, avr-libc and a makefile. The AVR microcontrollers are very easy to program. The Arduino libraries really just get in the way once you need to do anything with timers.
You can get an arduino clone for a lot cheaper than you can get an rpi clone.
Sometimes, you just need something very simple and a cheap arduino is the right choice.
Arduino is also a lot more user friendly for newcomers.
It’s a shame that Qualcomm will be the end of it.
If you buy one of the knock-offs, will the terms still apply? Cause I think I’m seeing an out here.
capitalism.
Qualcomm doing Qualcomm things
I remember watching a video where they talked about the changes. Apparently most of the language people are really upset about applies specificly to their website and forums. I can’t find the video, probably because I am sick and have barely slept in the last 4 days. I miss sleep … and not coughing.
Edit: changed “can” to “can’t”
I hope that you get over it soon. Coughing is the worst. I’d rather have hallucination levels of fever than have a bad cough.
Thanks! I actually managed 4-5 hours of sleep with minimal coughing last night. Things are trending the right direction.








