tldr; arduino teases its “from blink to think” ai launch amid $54m funding, raising questions about open-source certification, attribution, and the future of maker hardware.

In today’s mail, Arduino is teasing its “From Blink to Think” global event, branding it as the biggest reveal yet. A new product is set to launch that promises to “redefine tech” and empower builders everywhere, and it’s what will make the $54 million invested in Arduino all come together. So, yeah, it will be some AI thing.

Blink (the classic “hello world” LED tutorial) –> Think (AI).

Arduino has $54 million in funding, which is. Do investors care about breadboards and blinky LEDs? Or do they care more about recurring subscription revenue and having what is being called “AI” all over the place, from IDEs to the hardware.

Arduino will be acquired, or that’s a likely fate with funding, the investor need a return, this is a good time for vc-funded-Arduino to collaborate with open-source Arduino contributors. Some issues have shown no movement or progress on the IP/code/attribution front, and much of open source is about demonstrating intent. There are zero Open Source Hardware certifications from Arduino (there is from SparkFun, which licensed Arduino). It worth noting that it looks like the open-source SparkFun Arduino pro mini has had more sales than the Arduino version which is not open-source certified. I know some people do not think it matters if it’s open-source, but game is game ya’ll – it’s pretty cool to see the for-sure open-source doing well.

Arduino could also announce at this event that they are open-sourcing the Uno with an Open Source Hardware certification. Does it matter? No. It’s only if Arduino wants to send the signal. I asked 2 years ago, message received.

“We considered your suggestion of submitting our products for OSHWA certification, but we believe this would not provide any benefit to us or to end users as our strong commitment in open source hardware and software is already well known.”

And before Arduino goes full on AI… It would be great for Arduino to look at another A I first, Adafruit Industries! Please look at the library manager closely, we’ve had a long history with Arduino, including making Arduino’s in the USA (back when their company was taken over and there were two Arduinos)… and Limor has been a top contributor from the start, she is also about to have kid #2, so we’ll be busy with that soon and I want to be able to show our kids it’s always possible to try to fix things, and if not – document what happened, publish, and keep moving. Look like we’re gonna keep movin’

The “iArduino” contributions that appeared in the Arduino open-source report, from Arduino, indicate that something called iArduino, which isn’t Arduino itself, has made its code part of the ecosystem. We reported this, along with examples from Limor’s code where it appears the attribution was removed and the code was translated into Russian, among other instances. Arduino agreed something was “weird” and changed the name on the presentation and then instructed us to issue DMCA (take-down) requests, no thank you. That raises questions about ownership, attribution, and compliance. Arduino stated that they could not prevent the iArduino from using their trademark, but perhaps there is some information I am not aware of.

Since this might be an issue going forward, we used an edited Edge Impulse PR (acquired by Qualcomm). The PR does the same thing; it adds trademark rules in rules-trademarks.yml. Arduino’s complex history with trademarks and intellectual property is a thing. “AI” is its current state is still in court, a bunch of other people’s copyrighted stuff, this could add additional complexity depending on where Arduino goes.

Arduino surely has an open-source person in charge of open-source, no. The role of “Head of Maker Business, Open Source & Community” appears to be no longer in existence at Arduino. The Arduino CEO informed us and referred us to the “Chief Product Officer.”

That’s a bummer; it appears the more funding, the less open-source, and the less open-source-focused staff. The move to Arduino Pro, removal of the open-source commitments on the about pages, to “From Blink to Think” – likely a new AI board, all this costs tons of money too. See – “What will we do with an additional $22M?” – Arduino blog.

Arduino will likely pitch their new thing as the future. But the future isn’t what anyone expects, or can predict (maybe, sometimes you get to make it).

One thing is for sure, Arduino is a community, and Arduino like it or not is stuck with us, so please Arduino – you can pivot or whatever to AI and cloud IDEs with AI and hardware with AI, just spend the time to make it clear what’s open, what’s not, the $54m in funding happened _because_ of open source, not because of some future AI offering or “Industrial IoT” of whatever flavor of the day was.

Jamie Lang (Hacker News):

Vimeo, once the internet’s most prestigious stage for independent filmmakers and animators, is being acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons in a $1.38 billion all-cash deal. The sale, expected to close later this year, will end Vimeo’s turbulent run as a public company.

[…]

Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari promised “ambitious investments” in Vimeo’s future, citing enterprise video services and AI-enabled features. But given the company’s track record — including significant staff cuts and restrictions at Evernote and WeTransfer — many in the creative community are skeptical.

Via Manton Reece:

Says something about Vimeo’s decline that I heard about them being acquired not from the tech news websites that I read all the time, but from Cartoon Brew in my RSS reader[…]

Previously:

• Vimeo Returns to Apple TV
• Meetup and IAC Apps Acquired
• Filmic’s Entire Staff Laid Off
• Evernote Acquisition and Layoffs
• Vimeo’s Pivot

NEW PRODUCT: Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 – 5″ 720×1280 with Capacitive Touch – SC1975

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Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is the sequel to the popular Raspberry Pi Official Display. It’s smaller than the original: a mere 5′′, but has better resolution for a compact touchscreen display for Raspberry Pi. Unlike the original, it has a much higher quality IPS TFT screen, the same kind used on tablets. That means it looks great at any angle, and it has much higher resolution too, 1280×720 rather than 800×480! It is ideal for interactive projects such as tablets, entertainment systems, and information dashboards.

Raspberry Pi OS provides touchscreen drivers with support for five-finger touch and an on-screen keyboard, giving you full functionality without the need to connect a keyboard or mouse. No coding or special drivers required, everything works out of the box if you’re running the latest Pi OS.

Only two connections are required to connect the 720×1280 display to your Raspberry Pi: power from the GPIO port, and a ribbon cable that connects to the DSI port on all Raspberry Pi computers except for the Raspberry Pi Zero line. The Pi can be mounted on the back for a cute all-in-one setup.

The display can be configured for portrait or landscape mode. Check out the installation guide for how to get started fast. No tools are required, it’s plug-and-play easy!

In stock and shipping now!

When Deluxe Paint came out with the original Amiga in 1985, it was the killer app for the platform. [Christopher Drum] starts his recent article on just that note, remembering the day he and his mother walked into a computer store, and walked out with a brand new Amiga… thanks entirely to Deluxe Paint. Forty years on, how well can this killer app compete?

[Christopher] isn’t putting Deluxe Paint head-to-head with modern Photoshop; they’re hardly in the same class. Not Photoshop, no, but modern applications that do what Deluxe Paint did so well: pixel art. There was no need to call it pixel art back then, no, but with the resolutions on hand, all digital art was pixel art in 1985.

Or 1989, which is when Deluxe Paint III came out– that’s the last version written by Dan Silva and coincidentally the last version [Christopher] owned, and the one he focuses in on his tests. It has held up amazingly well.

Sure, you don’t get a full 24-bit colour palette, but most pixel artists stick to limited palettes still anyway. You don’t quite get a modern UI, but presence of useful keyboard shortcuts allows a Hands-On-Keybord-And-Mouse (We’ll call it HOKAM, in honour of HOTAS in aerospace) workflow that is incredibly efficient.

About the only things [Christopher] found Deluxe Paint III lacked compared to its successors were a proper layering system, and of course the infinite undo we’ve all gotten so used to. (DPIII has an undo button, but it could only store one operation.) He also complained about cursor latency for some brushes, but we wonder if that might have had something to do with Windows and the emulation layer adding a delay. One thing Amiga was always known for back in the day was the snappy cursor movement, even when the processor was loaded.

There were just as many features he found had been forgotten in the new generation — like palatte swapping animations, or flood-filling line gradients.

Anyone who owned an Amgia probably has fond memories of it, but alas, in spite of Commodore’s recent resurrection, we’re not likely to see a new one soon. On the other hand, at least when it comes to pixel art, there’s apparently no need to upgrade.

via reddit.

(Thumbnail and header image by Avril Harrison, distributed by Electronic Arts with Deluxe Paint.)