History of ARDUINO:

In 2005, in Ivrea, Italy, a project was initiated to make a device for controlling student-built interactive design projects that was less expensive than other prototyping systems available at the time. One of the cofounders, Massimo Banzi, named this piece of hardware Arduino in honor of Bar di Re Arduino (In 1002, King Arduin became the ruler of the Italy. Today, the Bar di Re Arduino, a pub on a cobblestoned street in town, honors his memory), and began producing boards in a small factory located in the same region as the computer company Olivetti.

The Arduino project is a fork of the open source Wiring platform and is programmed using a Wiring-based language (syntax and libraries), similar to C++ with some slight simplifications and modifications, and a Processing-based integrated development environment (IDE).

Arduino was built around the Wiring project of Hernando Barragan. Wiring was Hernando's thesis project at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. It was intended to be an electronic version of Processing that used our programming environment and was patterned after the Processing syntax. Arduino would not exist without Wiring and Wiring would not exist without Processing.

Currently, there are more than 200 distributors of Arduino products around the world. About 80 percent of people who buy this product are from the United States and Europe. The interest in this product is rising in the China, India, and South America markets. Over the years, new designs of the Arduino have been created. The original design is called the Arduino Uno. Some of the Arduino designs are the Arduino Mega, Arduino Nano, LilyPad Arduino, and Arduino Ethernet. This past year, the Arduino gained publicity by partnering with Google. Google released the Android ADK, or Accessory Development Kit, which is based on the Anduino. A person can build an Android app that uses the Phone’s camera, motion sensors, touch screen, and internet connectivity. It looks as though the Arduino is creating a new, cheaper way of programming. It does not seem to be going away any time soon; it is only getting more popular.

The first prototype board, made in 2005, was a simple design, and it wasn’t called Arduino. Massimo Banzi would coin the name later that year.