Arduino has been a staple in the maker community for years as one of the go-to developer boards for devices made for fun from tinkerers or hobbyists. In recent years, Arduino has become a board that is used by professionals and big business in order to prototype various parts or systems that are in development as well as bring new devices to the IoT.
The company attended the recent Maker Faire Bay Area in San Mateo, California, bringing new innovations to market including a smaller form factor board that includes the first-ever field programmable gate array (FPGA)-microcontroller board and a new connectivity board for future IoT applications.
Fabio Violante, CEO of Arduino, put aside some time to talk to Electronics360 about these latest Arduino innovations, where the company is headed in the coming years, the importance of STEM and the variety of new boards that have come out on the market in recent months.
At Maker Faire Bay Area this year, Arduino introduced two new boards. Can you give me some background on these products and what they will be used for?
We introduced new innovation targeting our internet of things strategy. There is a huge community of people that use Arduino as a professional tool. When it comes to IoT, we created a specific strategy in a more compact form factor of boards called MKR.
The MKR format combines all the ingredients of an Arduino but in a smaller board that can be used to create a secure IoT node. We introduced the first Arduino board that combines a microcontroller with an FPGA called the MKR Vidor 4000. This is important because it can be used for a wide range of IoT applications with a distinctive form factor and power for high performance. We aimed the MKR Vidor to democratize and simplify access to the world of FPGAs, which opens up a whole new way to make IoT devices. We also launched a new Uno Wi-Fi board that is targeted at IoT applications that need connectivity.
Read more: Arduino Looks to the Future of Developer Boards for Makers and Professionals
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