Open source hardware is here in a big way and it could be an attractive business opportunity. Even if your business presently has nothing to do with hardware, knowledge of this growing movement could prove profitable to you in the future.

Enter the Arduino

The Arduino is an open source micro-controller board with a very active development community. It’s creators both sell Arduino hardware and make hardware designs freely available for others to implement. This dual mechanism is slowly creating a de-facto hardware standard.

I had never heard of the Arduino until a couple of guys at my work were talking about a home project involving tweeting garage door status. I assumed it was just some obscure technology only uber-geeks would be interested in and didn’t think much about it until I stumbled on a TED conference video with Massimo Banzi, the creator of the product. He talked about how popular the Arduino has become in the hobbyist community with thousands of interesting projects under development.

Arduino as a business opportunity

It occurred to me that the Arduino and other open-source hardware may be interesting in terms of potential business solutions. It has a simple design and reputation for allowing people without a hardware background to get up and running quickly. This allows for quick adoption and lowers the barrier to entry into microcontroller programming.

Right now, it’s primarily taken off in the hobbyist community but it seems like just a matter of time until it or another open-source hardware platform takes the commercial world by storm just as Linux did a decade ago.

Noteworthy applications

• Kickstarter funded Ardusat Satellite
• Used on part of the Cern’s Large Hadron Collider
• A glove that transforms sign language into speech
• Various robotics projects
• RGB combination door lock
• High speed photography
• A plant monitor that tweets status messages like ‘time to water me’
• Various internet connected intelligent security systems

Programming overview

To program the device, one connects it to a PC via a USB or RS-232 cable.  On the software side the standard IDE provides syntax highlighting and the standard programming niceties. As previously mentioned, C/C++ is used in conjunction with a standard library used to interact with the device.

Sample code

To get an idea of what programming the Arduino is like check out some code snagged from Wikipedia:

#define LED_PIN 13

void setup () {
    pinMode (LED_PIN, OUTPUT);     // enable pin 13 for digital output
}

void loop () {
    digitalWrite (LED_PIN, HIGH);  // turn on the LED
    delay (1000);                  // wait one second (1000 ms)
    digitalWrite (LED_PIN, LOW);   // turn off the LED
    delay (1000);                  // wait one second
}

A well documented tutorial on programming the Arduino can be found here

The sky’s the limit

Right now, most of the applications of Arduino have been experimental in nature, however I believe that the Arduino is in the same phase that Linux was in the late 90s before it made the jump to commercial applications.

The creativity and enthusiasm in the open source hardware community could be made very profitable if you discover how to leverage it. All that’s required is some creative thinking on your part.