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KaiserPro

from memory there are three parts of what we think as Pi

1) the foundation, that does all the outreach, education and magazines

2) The commercial part (the actually makes the pis)

3) R&D

but it might be only two.

Either way I assume only the commercial part will float, leaving the foundation as the majority shareholder. It has the advantage of giving the foundation a couple of hundred million, which should allow it to continue to do great things. (if you think about computer/electronics education, its basically pi and scratch. Arduino has kinda dropped the ball.)

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Don't forget the Micro:bit and I'm not convinced "Arduino has kinda dropped the ball", they are doing just fine in the marketplace and the gear has come down in price to where $4 gets you a working microcontroller (and $5 for the Raspi 2040 pico).

What you can get under $10 these days is mindblowing and if all Arduino ever did was make their IDE which ties 100's of different boards together under a common development experience then that would be enough for me.

> I'm not convinced "Arduino has kinda dropped the ball"

While Arduino is strong in many regards and was a big improvement on the status quo when it came out in ~2005, they weren't very fast to respond to the rise of the esp8266 and super-low-cost boards made in China.

For a long time their cheapest product was the Uno R3 (with a 16 MHz 8-bit ATmega328) for about $25 while you could buy a Wemos D1 mini (with a 160 MHz 32-bit esp8266) for $2 - or an Uno clone on aliexpress for $3.

Arduino have updated their product line since then (the Uno R4 Minima offers a 48MHz 32-bit RA4M1 for $19) and it's understandable they wanted to retain compatibility with their 5v shield ecosystem. But they were definitely slow to respond to a changing market.

Sure, they're not perfect. But they're still in business and their volume is as large as it ever was. The parts stores where I go have whole walls dedicated to Arduino and clones, Raspberry Pi's maybe and other stuff not at all.

It's wild to me that they still offer the Mega 2560 Rev3 for nearly $50 with a USB-B port.

The fact that they do is what makes them a safe bet to use. Better expensive and available than unavailable. One the most annoying features of hardware work is that whatever you base your product on tends to disappear in smoke just when you hit production.

> big improvement on the status quo when it came out in ~2005,

I agree. If anything its an understatement. I could, as a normal person outside academia, without a structured learning environment, do microcontrollers, affordably. Not only that, I could make amazing things with it.

sure there was the basic stamp, but that was well, basic.

> 1) the foundation, that does all the outreach, education and magazines

Doesn't that count as marketing?

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