Arduino Creator Massimo Banzi
Keep It Simple
Arduino's cofounder describes the quest for simplicity.
I am a massive fan of Arduino. Every year, during Christmas and Halloween, I build some exciting projects for outdoor display. All my projects are powered by Arduino and Raspberry Pi boards. Even my fully open source Original Prusa MK2 3D printer is powered by an Arduino board. When I found that Massimo Banzi, the Arduino project's cofounder, was at the same event I was attending, I reached out to him, and we sat down for an hour-long interview.
Banzi also teaches interaction design at many universities in Europe. That's how Arduino started. Back in 2002, Banzi went to teach at a design school in Northwest Italy called the Interaction Design Institute. The objective of teaching was to apply design principles to the way we interact with things made of digital technologies. It's no longer about rotating dials and pushing buttons. It's about sensors, web interfaces, and touch screens. It could be a challenge to borrow and bring ideas from the physical world into a digital world. As a result, some of these things can be really easy, simple, and pleasurable to use, and some can be very annoying.
"We try to make it simple and easy for people to use things that we design using modern technologies. We worked at trying to figure out how to make electronics simple enough that anyone could pick it up in a few weeks and use it as a creative tool," he said. "I had been working on a number of projects to achieve that, and the last project summarized all of that research. That project was Arduino."
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.