Guneet Bedi with Arduino Pro

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

arduino, data, industrial, device, cloud, libraries, manufacturer, approach, gazillions, connected, austin, f1, people, hardware, good, engineers, ready, scott, enterprise grade

00:04

Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting-edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go.

00:21

Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk of the number one industrial podcasted universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. Because you're bold, brave, you dare greatly you innovate, you solve problems, and you're making the world a better place in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Guneet Bedi, and he is with a company called Arduino. Now we're going to be talking about our team their line of Arduino Pro. But the reality is, is that we need solutions we need clean, clear, digital solutions that everyone can take part in. And that's what Arduino Pro represents. So, let's get cracking with the conversation. Loved the loved of the chat. Without a doubt. It was great, because one of the things that I struggle with every time I have these, in my mind the use cases, these use cases of saying okay, this is great. Everybody's talking about this digital transformation journey. But I always get to the point of well, what's my first step? Who do I talk to becomes a human conversation, of course, and I think the technology is the technology. But then you have to ask the question of, well, can I afford it? Is it is it something that is financially viable? Or am I just going to just struggle the whole time, because it's so expensive in my gleaning, and getting the information out of my operation, that helps me become more successful in what I do. And I think that the term that Guneet brought up was the democratization of, of this solution. The other area that he talked about was because I don't have time to wait. So, I'm always about the compression of time, in some way, shape, or form. And he brings up some really interesting points on speed. It's one thing to say yes. But it's another thing to do it in a sense of urgency, and begin to reap the benefits of being able to collect that data for your operations. That to me, and then the final point where we're going to have a follow up conversation. And that is just, it's where do we find the people to do it, right? Where do we find that pool of professionals that can help achieve success, and not headaches in this journey. And so he touches upon really a lot of good points. And of course, the security side too, as well. All right, before we get in the conversation, go out to Industrial Talk, you want to be a part of Industrial Talk, that's where it starts, just go out there, click reach out to me, you're good to go. We'd love to be able to tell your story. We'd love to be able to amplify your message in some way, shape, or form. But just go out to IndustrialTalk.com. The other thing that you can do while you're there is you can take in these great on demand webcasts. We have a couple of that are out there, we're going to continue to add to them. And they're on demand. So you can't just make the statement as I don't I'm not available at 11 o'clock Central Standard Time. Now just go out there and join and listen, write some notes. Good to go. Because when when I look at all the stuff that's taking place out there in industry, it's really an education game. It's an education game, because it's happening. You have to know about it. And why not? And I mean, why not consume content that is specific to you and your success delivered by people that know a lot, a lot of industrial professionals and leaders and trailblazers. It just makes complete sense. And you just keep on adding make it a part of your your daily routine. All right. Guneet Bedi, Arduino Pro is the company or Arduino you if you're an engineer, you've heard of Arduino. This is their pro series. And we cover a lot of topics. One pi, by the way, it's just like f1. That's always I'm going to be talking about that all day long. All right, here's Guneet Guinea. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your schedule to talk to the best listeners on Earth. And we're going to be talking a lot about Arduino Pro listeners. We're going to be talking about collecting that data. We're going to be talking about devices. It's all on the docket for conversation. How are you doing Guinea?

05:19

I am doing well. Scott, thank you so much for having me love being here. I love being in air conditioning when it's super, super freakin hot in Texas. We're here was good. And

05:29

I gotta tell you, man, when it when the temperature does break, because he's in Austin, I'm in right outside in New Orleans. And when the temperature does break, you have you feel better, it's just feels much better. Absolutely. By the way, the listener, he's into f1. I'm an f1. We were having a great conversation offline, about f1. And if if you need to check out f1 It's cool stuff. Talk about data collection. That's where it's at.

06:00

I believe the reason I got into it, so of course, I got into it because of the Netflix series. And because of Austin. One of the things I got into is Ferrari users and Arduino device to do testing on their pets. You know, that's one of the reasons I got into it. And I'm like, oh my god, this is a technical problem with like, so much fun. So yeah, we can talk about f1 We can talk about Arduino.

06:27

Know that. Okay, now, before we get into that topics of data collection, let's, let's give us a little background on Guneet. And where you come from and who you are.

06:39

Yeah, you got it. My man, I grew up in a military family in India moved to the US spent a bunch of years in Chicago, Silicon Valley, but a decade and then now in Austin, Texas. And Scott, what I've done is, you know, started my career with the Cisco's and the oracles of the world, some more heavy enterprise tech, you know, hardware software. But in the last eight years, I've spent in three or four startups, really focusing on Internet of Things. And more importantly, how do you enable as a service revenue models? How do you enable recurring revenue, and you know, from the data that you can collect from heavy industrial, so I was the chief revenue officer for a company called Relayr. And Relayr started and then they got acquired we so you know, I was one of the initial founding team members, then I also consulted with falconry, congratulations to them, they've just got bought by ifs, like, super cool. And for the last eight months, I've been at Arduino. And really, you know, helping people use the Arduino platform and ecosystem 40 million plus developers and use that approach to do industrial and you know, data collection.

07:42

It's insane. Every time when I see something posted by Arduino, there's a there's a gazillion people say, yes, that's great, ya know, and it's just, it's just the device. And it was I clicked on it. Yeah, yeah, that's great. They're passionate about their Arduino. tools and solutions, big time. Now back into f1. I think. And you could correct me if I'm wrong. Everybody in manufacturing everybody in in the world of industry, and I'll just keep on going up a little bit, everyone in the world of industry is looking for that, that ability to be able to see into their operations in a as an compress the time as a, as much as possible to be able to take those, whatever that data saying, and tactically tackle. What's happening. And f1 is like, real time into that asset all the time, and they're making real time decisions. Do you find that that? I think that that is sort of the holy grail of manufacturing, to get that, that complete insight? Do you agree with that?

08:50

I completely agree with you, Scott. And I think this is a really good question, because it's also given an insight of why aren't Arduino to Pro, right? Because? Absolutely, it is about real time data. But it's also about how do you get that real time data in a cost effective manner without spending gazillions of dollars? And how do you do that with the talent that you have available? Right, and there is a big talent gap. And Menard Reno started? Actually, I don't know if you knew this, but we started in 2008. So almost 16 years ago. And you know, we built the whole premise was, how do you make electronics simple, you know, you do not need to read at 12,000 page manual for a microcontroller to go get data from a device, right? How do you make that simple? And you know, our thing was, any student, you know, middle school, high school, should be able to do this any hobbyists, should we do this in less than five minutes? The goal was less than five minutes. You do a board. Wow. Right. But what we found out is also our business and you know, our approach is really doing well with hobbyist and education. Like every high school kid comes out with an Arduino knowledge today. And you know, we sold a bunch but more importantly, we have about 83 million projects done on Arduino right? PD 3 million

10:01

with an M.

10:04

It is crazy. I don't even know that right? Eight months ago. But what was more interesting Scott to answer your question was we found and put words in places they should not have been oil wells, oil rigs, Formula One testing, you know, automotive plant floors. And we're like, this is great. This is amazing. And this really shows the power of what data can do if data is really easy to get from any old asset. And we said the only issue we have today the two issues. Issue number one is the boards and the hardware was not enterprise grade. So we launched Arduino pro, you know, high temperature ranges, security, everything has crypto and security built in by default. And then also we did all the enterprise grade features, number one, and number two, the application firmware or you know, the libraries that we do. We have close to 9000 Libraries today, but not all of them are enterprise grade. So we created a team focused on enterprise application libraries so that you know, when you use the software, you're sure it does well. So that's what we do. We literally use the Ferrari testing as an example and said, Oh my God, if Ferraris testing without Reno, we need to make it enterprise ready.

11:15

I saw a photo of an Arduino solution in, in a farming application, like out in the middle of and it's like it dirt. And yet it's it's doing what it needs to do and, and delivering whatever information that is necessary. Fantastic learning is

11:39

smart, because attractors can feel farms and take up the land. You know why they do it is because there's not enough talent, you know, out there to go and hire expensive engineers. So what we're hoping to do is really democratize talent. And as you know, us Ah,

11:59

that's awesome. That's a way that's, that is so true. Because in in our offline conversation listener, we were I was just saying, Hey, I'm a manufacturer, I'm given this use case of a, I'm a manufacturer, and I go out online, and the World Wide Web is telling me that data collection is everything that makes my my business more efficient, more resilient, more insightful. And so my operations will be better. And I know bottom line value, blah, blah, blah, all out there on the World Wide Web. But for me, if I'm the manufacturer, it's like, what's step one? And and, and it's always gets down to the person, the company and the trust. And so take me through this use case. So I'm a manufacturer, and I just contact Arduino. Hey, help me? Does that is that work?

12:54

That I know, you're absolutely right, that works. And today, I would say, the tagline we live by Arduino speed skin, you know, the first mover advantage can sink or, you know, Sailor company, it's that simple, right? And you know, if you're a manufacturer who's one trying to launch a connected product, you need to be fast, right? You don't need to be perfect, but you need to be fast to get to market is our mantra. And you don't need to spend 24 months and you know, a million dollars in NRA trying to do chip down design. We feel chip down design for less than 10,000 200,000 units. And I'm going to make a big statement should be debt should make no sense. Right? So when we do a system on module approach, we give you a modular board, we give you the tool chains, we give you the software, we want you to launch the prototype in less than 24 days. So your tagline is 24 months to 24 days. And you do not need to pick gazillions of dollars in NRA, we will give you the board. And there's a community of 36 million developers, including your closest, you know, university in Arizona State University all the way to Georgia Tech. There are kids coming out of smart kids with computer science electronics background who can help you, right, get that get to the first prototype. Now it's not fully commercially ready and all that good stuff. But we would highly recommend that the manufacturers think of speed step one. And for that, we'll create it our flagship product line for PLCs. It's called Okta and the PLC, Siemens and Rockwell I hope to run for their money again in the very micro nano space not in the high end you know technology space, but if you want a quick conveyor belt use case to count product. You can use us you know you can get started in less than $250 device fully ready to go with the Arduino approach, which hopefully most engineers no 40% engineers use Arduino today, Scott in the word Coronavirus. 40% engineers know how to use Arduino.

14:54

If your droplets of truth bombs I mean 40% That I don't even know how much of that is. But 40% is a huge number. But what I like hearing is the fact that I can take my use, you know, using that analogy of a manufacturing line, whatever it might be, and be able to, I know what's going on in my head, I know what challenges I have in my operation. And I can, I can, without investing a gazillion dollars, begin to tackle those challenges. Because Arduino has a solution that can help me move that ball forward to use a sports analogy, move that ball forward. And and then begin. You're absolutely right.

15:46

You're absolutely right, Scott. And I think taking that one step forward. I love this approach, by the way, you know, devices and device hardware to get data is really hard. But it's only the first step. Because you need to then do the firmware, you do need to do the software libraries you need to the cloud, you need to do have all the tool chains. By the way, all the tool chains need to align with machine learning and artificial intelligence and need to be secure. Right? So they need to be super, super secure. Because this is mission critical data, you know, you don't want your manufacturing bottling plant information or your oil and gas well information going to some random hacker. So if you put all of this together, it's pretty hard, right? Just the device hardware takes some people eight to nine months, which we want to do and you know, hopefully less than a month, but we're a software company. Right? So what we've done is we've abstracted the hardware with our IDE. And by the way, the IDE is free. That's why we have such a big following,

16:42

or clarification. What does IDE stand for?

16:46

Good question. So it's the it's the libraries and the development environments, it's called the Integrated Development Environment, the software that would you would use either in the cloud or on premise to you know, get the hardware ready to send data. So it's like that core software that you use. That's, that's what we call the ID. The free right today for anybody to use. And I think that's what we think is the real secret sauce that are being developed. Because that allows you to use any hardware that you want any machine that you want. And very quickly connect to the cloud. Of course, we give some hardware, we give some hardware, which is ready to go. But you don't have to use the hardware, you can use any hardware, right?

17:32

The library itself, do you continue to add to it?

17:36

We do? That's a really good question, Scott. So, like I said, we do but also the community does, right. So the 30 plus million developers. So today, if I count correct, I'm looking at my screen at 200 libraries. So we have 8200 libraries, anything from connecting a device to Alexa to low battery power, just, you know, a library to put something and low power library to connect to AWS allows you to connect to Microsoft Cloud Library to do smart parking. Think there's a bunch of libraries out there. And there's 180 200 Libraries today.

18:09

And as an engineer, I all I have to do is access that information, get the device that I have chosen, whatever it might be, boom, I'm able to get up and running and begin collecting data. It's all

18:22

on GitHub. It's literally open source. You know, we were born with the core concept of open source as a company. Everything's open source GitHub, of course, there are certain libraries, which we certify, which you might have to license, you know, like the meals stuff I talked about, because you know, we want to make sure that's enterprise grade and secure. But 95% Plus libraries are completely open available out there. Some of the libraries, we just have licensed them to make sure that their enterprise grade but yeah, they're all out there on almost all of them out there.

18:53

So I'm interested so I want this journey to begin. I contact Arduino Arduino says, Hey, thank you very much for contacting me. Tell me what your situation is. Well, we got this, that and the other thing. This is our manufacturing process. And we want to begin that digital transformation journey and we need we need, we need to start it. Does Arduino internally begin helping that customer site? Okay, you have some engineers down here. You got this? Do you help paint that picture?

19:27

Really good question. So, so yes, we've set up an enterprise team now or Arduino protein, including in the US. So we have two offices, Chicago and Austin, where we have solution architects, you know, as well as customer experience and customer service folks, same with all over Europe, you know, Italy, Germany, UK, where we do exactly what you said and we have two approaches. The first approach is what we call industrial automation. Where we have finished products you know, it's a PLC, a programmable logic control, or a machine controller which you know, Has ready to install, you know, you could a technician could put it in and get ready tomorrow for energy management for machinery monitoring or condition monitoring predictive maintenance. So that's one approach, which is a little faster ready to go. And it's a solution place, it automatically connects to the cloud. Like it's literally the first VLC, which is Wi Fi, totally connected to the cloud, any cloud, AWS, Arduino, doesn't matter. That's one approach. The second approach is what we call System on Modules or, you know, approach where we have modular electronics, which smart sensing all the way from environmental monitoring to motion sensing to vision and distance, which you can embed into an electronic box, it's a little bit more work to do, but it's more customizable. But also, that is a solution approach, because by default, all of them are connected. All of them either BLE Bluetooth long, you know, low power, or Wi Fi. And in some cases, Ethernet. So all electronics you get is by default connected. And the goal is within minutes to have that connected to the cloud, or connected to your laptop if you don't want to cloud and ready to go.

21:12

Okay, so I'm connected. I'm pulling data. How is that data displayed? How do I, how do I begin mining? How do I begin pulling out the nuggets of insights from the data? I can get it? I got it. It's all connected. Is Arduino somewhat agnostic? When it comes to whatever the tool is for displaying it that that dashboard? Whatever it might be?

21:40

Yeah, really good question. So So I think the interesting thing that Arduino is all the Arduino Pro products come with really powerful microcontrollers, and microcontrollers and microprocessors. And the reason is, go a little geeky for a minute, is one it allows you to run that libraries we talked about to connect to any cloud or any way to display data. In a lot of reliability, folks love having data available in Power BI dashboards are having them local, not to the cloud. We love working with reliability, because I think that's a winner. We think it's not Internet of Things. We think it's Internet of legacy things and or things where reliability guys. Like, who cares what new stuff like millions of old stuff like that, right? So absolutely. So one, we can do that, that connect to any kind of display. The other thing, which is really cool is because it's powerful, you know, cortex, M seven and force, we've seen a lot of edge AI use cases where you never connect to the cloud, but you run the algorithm all the way in that chip. You know, we've seen counting, we've seen anomaly detection, we've seen vision happen, we have a lot of manufacturing plants, putting little sensors in the robotic arms. And they don't even connect to the cloud. They don't want to, but you know, they do it in the test lab. But then they run that algorithm all the way on the device. So we see all of that we see any, you know, Power BI, AWS, you know, Azure IoT, cloud, our own cloud, or we see local desktops and laptops, or in some cases, we just see edge AI, which this just runs locally without talking.

23:15

So what I hear you saying is that that's not an issue, you'll be able to no matter what the application is, be able to see that data, analyze the data according to your methodologies, or whatever it might be. But you're able to sort of see it and do it and be able to extract that insights. Exactly,

23:38

exactly. Scott. Now, of course, that may not be exactly what you need for the production device for you know, forever, but we can get you started with we say 80 to 90% of the functionality available, you know, connectivity available. Any cloud like you said, and then you know you can take your time if you want to customize it. We of course our professional services are we have a ton of system integrator partners everywhere that can come in and help you customize this

24:04

dashboard. And I could say hey, I'm here in Austin, and I'm looking for somebody to sort of work with because I've got a passionate about my Arduino Pro setup. I just need need a little you know, hand holding here.

24:18

Exactly. So if you're in Austin I connected with a gentleman in Dojo five. It's a small company right here system integrator in Chicago connected with the largest Siemens integrated DMC. We've trained DMC on all our adrenal stuff, they can help you deploy, they can help you customize, they can help you you know, change, but hardware battery operate, like all the fun stuff, right? But the good news is you can show your bosses and you can show a real all the machine connected sending data in days, not weeks and months. And with very little investment. You know, you buy a couple of $100 device, maybe you spend 1000 bucks on an engineer, and you're there. I don't need to spend gazillions and spent months trying to do that. Right? That's I think

25:03

that's excited. It's fun. It's because you know, as well as I do many of the manufacturers out there, that's fine. What's it going to cost me? What's it going to impact? What kind of problems am I going to have to deal with? Because I decided that I needed to go on this journey to collect the data. It's automatic, they're gonna go down the road of like, what? Yeah, but but this seems to solve the, the risk of killing your cost wise, because you're already down the road, you're all committed, but the risk of costs the risk of of a, or the removal of the risk of an unproven solution, because Arduino pros been out there done that the risk of a people the human component to that, because now you got a bunch of people who have been, have been living with Arduino forever. So you really address all elements of the what I'm concerned with is just getting it done. And and those would be the risks that I would consider what do you guys need? What do you see it going? What What What's that vision that that future vision?

26:16

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the vision for us has always been, we have been our whole vision is democratizing technology, and what we call creating citizen technologists. So what we do want to do is make getting data from devices and doing electronics super easy and super simple. Right? Of course, what that means is we will be build a large community of folks, and a lot of them will buy our hardware rather than buy our software. So that, you know, there is some vision of enabling enterprises to quickly get to the business outcome that they're looking for, you know, be it a connected product, be it and as a service product line, which a lot of people want to do, you know, truthfully, is a cutters, the poster child of laser cutting from Germany doesn't sell laser cutters anymore. They sell cutting as a service, right? They want to do, yeah, that's pretty cool, right? Yeah, yeah, we want to do that we want to enable any business outcome you have, what we'll do is make it super simple. democratize all of that. And the last part, I'll say, which is super important to us, we do not want to create a vendor lock in. So you know, we've always been Switzerland, yes, in a lot of the larger vendors don't like that. But you know, to your approach, what is the risk because even if you don't like the Arduino, hardware, or open source, or at least open schematics, get a license from us take everything and build it your build it your own, you know, or go to Siemens, we don't care. But at least we got you there. We got you started, you know, to kind of so I think our vision is we will never lock you in. We're vendor neutral and always want to be vendor neutral.

27:49

About giddy. I'm ready to go. I don't even have a manufacturing line. And I feel like I need to go but purchase and get involved in this journey of acquiring some Arduino products. By the way. I don't have I don't have any. I need some because I don't have anything here. I have this. I have this vibration thing right there.

28:12

I'll send you a care package and you can send me a care package back from New Orleans. How about that? I'll send you all the adrenal stuff.

28:18

Do you want food? Sure. Here's some sausage. Hey, we're gonna wrap it up. How do people get a hold of you? They're gonna eat

28:31

a question, of course. reno.cc. So it's not arduino.com. So arduino.cc, a website, my personal, you know, email or LinkedIn, Guneet Bedi. And my email is G.gedi, for G dot last name@arduino.cc. But just go to arduino.cc. There's a proline there, find out, talk to us. We'd love to help you. We just expand it in the US. So just to let everybody know, we have you know, a large team in Austin and Chicago that we're setting up and we have a good talent, good marketing folks. Good sales folks. Good solution architects, as well as you know each other, we can help you. We'd love to help you on a factory floor.

29:13

Telling you man, I'm all excited for you guys. Man. This is exciting times. I like it. I like the democratization of anything. I agree. I love it.

29:23

I'm all for it. But thank you for your time, man. I appreciate it.

29:26

Absolutely. All right, let's do this. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. We're gonna have all the contact information for Guneet and Arduino Pro out on Industrial Talk. So fear not reach out. It's a must. That's your call to action. So stay tuned. We will be right back.

29:42

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

29:51

Now that's a wrap. That's Guneet Bedi Arduino is the company. Look for the Arduino Pro go out to an Arduino.CC right there, boom, find the Pro Series and make it happen. access this information. It's all there, open source in your budget without a doubt, I know it's in your budget. And then you can be part of the digital transformation juggernaut that exists out there. datas it is going to happen. And you don't want your competition to have the data and you don't because it's important. There, I said it. Industrial Talk.com Go out there. Find out route around, listen to some of the podcasts, listen to some of the videos, listen to some of the webcasts that we have out there, continue to learn, continue to collaborate, continue to innovate because it's happening. People will be braved are greatly hanging out with Guneet and you will change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly so stay tuned.