From Arduino's Terms & Conditions [1], Section 8.2:

"8.2 User shall not:

- translate, decompile or reverse-engineer the Platform, or engage in any other activity designed to identify the algorithms and logic of the Platform’s operation, unless expressly allowed by Arduino or by applicable license agreements; or

- extract or make copies of the information contained in the Platform (except with respect to Content owned by other users), make derivative works from the Platform, reuse the Platform, or make any other use of the Platform other than as set forth in these Terms or as permitted by applicable law."

Does anyone really want to use an "open-source" maker/tinkering platform with such egregious rules against tinkering?

[1] https://www.arduino.cc/en/terms-conditions/

What I liked about the older, simpler Arduino was that you could move an ATmega328p project from an Arduino board to a chip on a breadboard then to a custom PCB with minimal complexity - with just hobbyist-level skills.

But the boards and modules just seem to be getting ever more complex, with lots of tiny SMD components, removing that path.

"Long-Range" sensor projecs?

Is the long range in the room with us? It is I2C not very well known for long ranges. Especially with motors and electric drives and their EMI I2C is not the best decision.

From the title I was more in "Oh, what type of long range wireless they have opted for?" and didn't expect I2C.

For long range wired I would consider more a RS485 or CAN. Short ranges like in a small robot arm, a small car, and alike I2C maybe enough.

ISn't this just https://www.sparkfun.com/qwiic or https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-adafruit-stemma-qt/wh... ?

A bit of topic , but I wonder if people who are starting in this field not directly start on esp32 platforms. It's so damn easy to develop with AI on these platforms. In the past we spend a week on lcd drivers alone. Now one can build an entire application that controls other devices via serial, has its own fancy UI, has all kind of useless features like 40 languages, its own webserver, OTA, demo modes and more. With Arduino I am not sure what you get these days

I thought arduino was on everyone's shit lists for trying to go closed source? Did that change?

I predict the AI enabled MCU development wave will lift all ships.

AI has absolutely crushed the barrier to entry for using this gear. It's a spectacular turn of events and I suspect sales have never been better, if my own behavior is any indication.

Arduino ships an STM32 which is really feature rich btw.

I really can't get over how many things in life do not require an OS but people used them anyways because it's easier to develop on.

The first ESP32 board I worked with had some damn WiFi stack running in the background—not nearly as "bare metal" as I had come to expect from having just stepped out of the Arduino world.

(I've since learned, from an LLM, ha ha, how to turn that off if you don't need it.)

Yeah I did a project with ESP32 and micropython recently and getting the proof of concept up was very very quick. The agent I was using also had no problem writing drivers for peripherals that didnt already have micropython drivers (I seem to recall it ported C or Arduino reference code)

I just started with esp-idf because I can't stand all the bloat of Arduino/Platform.io/ESPHome. Especially now where working with unfamiliar tech stack is easier than ever.