Mark your calendars! One of the biggest Maker ‘holidays’ is just around the corner.
As Makers, there’s one special occasion that we just can’t help but love: Arduino Day! It is a 24-hour celebration – both official and independent – where hobbyists, tinkerers and even some experienced engineers from all over the world come together to share their DIY experiences. This year, the second annual ‘holiday’ is slated for March 28, 2015.
2014 saw more than 240 user groups, Makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs, schools, studios and educators throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Australia involved in planning activities, workshops, and events for a wide range of audiences and skill sets. Those needing a refresher can tune-in to Massimo Banzi’s official announcement from last year here.
“You can attend an event or organize one for your community. It doesn’t matter whether you are an expert or a newbie, an engineer, a designer, a crafter or a Maker: Arduino Day is open to anyone who wants to celebrate Arduino and all the things that have been done (or can be done) with it,” the team writes. “The events will offer different types of activities, tailored to local audiences all over the world.”
As far as official events are concerned, the company has organized five of them in Torino, Malmo, Bangalore, Boston and Budapest. Meanwhile, local events are put together by the community, just supported and curated by the Arduino crew. If you’re interested in creating a get-together at your Makerspace, you can do so by submitting an application.
Like we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel is at the very heart of nearly ever Arduino board on the market today, thereby helping tinkerers bring their wildest creations to life.
Indeed, as our resident Wizard of Make Bob Martin noted, our 8- and 32-bit MCUs have been the chips of choice for Arduino since the boards first hit the streets way back in 2005 — as you can see in the first prototype below. More specifically, he attributes the success of Arduino to its easy-to-use, free cross-platform toolchain and simple do-it-yourself packages with Atmel MCUs.
“These factors helped initially steer the Arduino team to choose our AVR microcontrollers – and today, both our AVR and Atmel | SMART ARM-based MCUs,” Martin explained.
In addition to young Makers and educators, it’s no surprise that the open-source electronics platform has even become increasingly popular among experienced designers, architects and engineers as well.
Now just a few weeks away, you can follow along with Arduino’s official countdown and locate an #ArduinoD15 meet-up near you! In the meantime, as you get started on your next project to celebrate the occasion, you can find out which Atmel based ‘duino is right for you here. Of course, we’ll also be celebrating Arduino Day at Atmel with extra project coverage, so be sure to stop by and check out our upcoming blog posts around the Maker favorite platform!
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