Also known as: Arduino LLC, Arduino SA
Arduino is an open-source hardware company that makes the Arduino microcontroller boards and the accompanying development environment.1
Overview
Arduino began around 2005 at a design school in Ivrea, Italy, from a project led by Massimo Banzi and collaborators who wanted an easy, cheap way for artists and students to build interactive electronics. The result paired a simple microcontroller board — early boards built around Atmel’s AVR ATmega chips — with a friendly programming environment, and released both the board designs and software as open source.2
That openness let others freely study, copy, and extend the platform, fueling a huge maker ecosystem of compatible boards, shields, and tutorials. The company designs and sells official boards and maintains the Arduino IDE and libraries.
What they make
The Arduino line spans a few board families plus the software that ties them together:
| Product | What it is |
|---|---|
| Uno / Nano | Classic 8-bit ATmega boards for learning and small projects |
| Mega | Larger board with many I/O pins |
| MKR / Nano 33 | 32-bit boards with wireless for IoT |
| Arduino IDE | The editor, compiler, and library manager |
Where it fits
Arduino made microcontroller programming approachable for people without an electronics background, and its boards are a common starting point for sensors, automation, and small embedded projects. In an SDR context, an Arduino is a natural choice for the simple control glue around a receiver — switching an antenna relay, reading a sensor, or driving status LEDs — while heavier signal processing happens on a host computer nearby.