Open Source technologies, a term every software nerd is aware of but have you ever think why should software get all of the “Open Source” share and why not hardware can be part of it. Time to change the concept because its already there, yes Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software and more over it’s not just for electrical engineers or PCB designer cup of tea but anyone who intends can be part of it be it artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Arduino is an inexpensive and completely open source hardware prototyping platform from it PCB board layout to the boot loader, to the standard libraries, to the IDE and other development tools and even most of its extensions, or shields, are open source.

Interestingly, Arduino comes with pretty good Arduino foundation tutorial and helping examples in a same way like we have in all famous softwares’ documentations and tutorial, as most of programming languages, the first program of tutorials prints “hello world” to the screen. Since an Arduino board doesn’t have a screen, it has very first example in its tutorial on how to turn an LED on and off.

The best part for being it open-source-ness is that Arduino boards can be built by hand or one can skip it to purchase pre-assembled available in almost every corner of the world including India and the software to run it can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license.

Via – OSCON, Open Source Convention

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