How Arduino Is Becoming The World's Social Network For Hackers And Makers
How Arduino Is Becoming The World's Social Network For Hackers And Makers
No central website exists where makers–the folks in the DIY tech community–can gather around and show off what they’ve built. As the model stands right now, makers show off their projects on Instructables, link their code to GitHub, then blog about it on WordPress. In most cases when a maker posts a tutorial for a project that goes viral and brings big bucks of revenue to the distributors of the components, he will never see a penny. Without a platform to hang out on and share stories, or a reward system for sharing great ideas, people don’t have much incentive to build beyond their own curiosity.Arduino is to makers what Hobby Lobby is to arts and crafts–the main supplier for the components and little hardware boards used for inventive DIYs. But what if they could be more? What if in addition to being a one-stop shop for tech components they could also be a community more like Pinterest?Over the span of three months, 42 million visits to the Arduino website came from recurring users–the die-hard makers. Arduino interpreted that figure as an opportunity to morph its site into the ultimate maker’s clubhouse. Now, after hundreds of commits to their website, Arduino.cc is a social experience. The new model even allows for translation of tutorials into other languages.“That was really important since the communications in Arduino are spread out across the globe,” says creative director Giorgio Olivero. When I was building my own project using the Arduino Yun, I learned a little Japanese and German in order to understand tutorials from two makers on the other side of the puddle. Makers are everywhere. Here’s how cofounder Massimo Banzi and Olivero are trying to bring them together.Little Changes, Big StakesOlivero and Banzi understood that beyond just making Arduino profiles more “social,” the big change would come from a reward system. Now, a maker can make a percentage of the sales their tutorial generates. This will attract users to post their content online versus other sites like Instructables because tutorials posted on Arduino measure the click-through purchases and reward the original curators. This is even a plus for people just making the tutorials, because before this users needed to click around before they found the hardware and other materials for a specific DIY.The incentive model hopes to create pay for makers of stellar tutorials. “If their tutorials bring sales to the store, we need to provide some reward to whoever wrote that tutorial. In a way we’re trying to create this loop where people create beautiful projects, put them online as tutorials, and publish the code. In exchange we can help them promote their tutorials through the blog, and in a way, these tutorials become things people actually use,” says Banzi.Among other changes, the rise of the new Wi-Fi-powered Arduinos, such as the Linux based Yun, spurred the demand for a unified coding editor online. Since these boards are connected to the Internet, it’s much easier to update the code without having to dig them up and plug them into your computer for an upgrade. With the unified coding editor Arduino plans to launch, you can just type up the code, from your phone or your tablet, save it, and run it on the board. No need to go digging the devices out of tubes in your kitchen or irrigation systems.