Massimo Banzi with Arduino
On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at the 30th Annual SMRP conference and talking to Massimo Banzi, CO and Founder of Arduino about “Powerful and Innovative Digital Transformation Solutions for Managing Assets”. Get the answers to your “IoT Devices” questions along with Massimo's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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Company Website: https://www.arduino.cc/
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
arduino, people, industrial, companies, technology, digital transformation, build, industry, world, products, work, software, conversation, massimo, find, happening, hardware, connected, microcontrollers, platform
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to arduino.cc and you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to arduino.cc. Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey. arduino.cc Change is happening, and Deloitte is your partner, Deloitte, US and global network. They always deliver measurable, sustainable results for clients and communities. It's important to have a partner like Deloitte in your corner to manage and help you through this change. Find out more go to deloitte.com.
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 get as far
as Welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining the platform that is just absolutely passionate about your success in industry. You're bold, you're brave, you're daring greatly. You're changing lives, you're changing the world. Celebration is at the top of every conversation. Thank you very much for what you do. Arduino is in the hot seat. The gentleman's name is Massimo. And, you know you're in the world of digital transformation. And you're looking for some solutions. You're looking for those Sherpas you're looking for help. Arduino let's get cracking. Yeah, so the reality is, is that we were broadcasting from SMRP had a great conversation with Massimo team Arduino. And the reality is, is that if you're not in the digital transformation game, right? If you're not, and you're saying, Do I need to or don't I, if you want a business that is resilient, you need solutions, you need a digital transformation solution, you don't need a big bank right off the bat, you need to just be engaged, you need to continue to educate and collaborate. And the conversation with Arduino is just spot on massive, massive street cred out there. And they've been around for a long time, and they know exactly they've got I'm telling you, they have a team of incredible professionals out there just know they want to solve your problems. That's, that's the conversation we're gonna have. All right. Before we get into that conversation, as you know, we always go to conferences, right? You've seen it out there. You've you've you've seen, you know, the photos and pictures and videos and all of the great stuff that exists out there, you can tell that we were pretty passionate about being on site. And having those conversations with companies and individuals that are just helping people succeed, we're going to be at Fabtech. This is about a week or so yeah, about a week. And again, it's going to be great, where we've got a great booth, and we're going to be talking to some of the leaders within the world of manufacturing again, and just just support these companies because they're really trying to do the best they can to, to help solve problems. If you're saying you're so scattered, can't make it to Fabtech, which, you know, absolutely spot on. Go out to industrial talk, we are going to be at other events, just find out. If you see that we're at an event, and you're going to be at that event. It's easy. Just reach out and say Scott, I'm going to be at that event, I'd love to be able to have that conversation, boom, done. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. And the same thing, I see that you're going to be at whatever we want. We want to connect, we do a lot of wonderful things at these events. We do technology, speed dating, which is I gotta tell you, it's a lot of fun. And and because there's such a velocity that exists within industry, that highlighting technology, hiding, highlighting the innovation is just a real exciting time. So we just what we do, I'll just tell you what we do. We'll go to your booth. We'll find the right individual talk about that technology that you're you're showcasing. And we just have a quick conversation. We loaded up to LinkedIn, we tag everybody, boom, everybody wins. Everybody gets to see the technology that exists. I'm telling you, it's a lot of fun. And boy for me who loves to live that Discovery Channel life. I get to learn from The best and stay at the cutting edge of what people are thinking from an innovation and technology perspective. I can't say that I know everything. Much of it is way above my paygrade but it's exciting to be a part of that education and that learning and, and I highly recommend that you do that. So go out to industrial talk.com Find out where we're going to be chirping from a conference and look us up. Again, if you're in flight Fabtech look us up because well, we're going to be there and and all the information’s out there. Arduino, Massimo is in the hot seat. And one of the the areas that are just fascinating for if you pull on that string a little bit is how do everybody and I mean everybody, take advantage of the digital transformation world. If you dip your toes into the world, it's fine. But how do you begin to collect data? How do you begin to leverage the technology to be able to give you insights and actionable insights into the health of your assets right there.
Arduino all the contact information for Massimo and Arduino will be out of course on Industrial talk.com. Enjoy the conversation, Massimo Welcome to industrial talk, as you can tell, we are broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. And you guys need to be here about that. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, yeah, no, totally. Next time, I'll make sure
you know it. My goal is to make sure that one of these conferences we're going to be able to get together and connect in person. That's, that's what I want. But you're not aturan. Right? Or do we not have time?
Sadly, I'm doing actually is scraping different places. So primo in Italy is the place where we have the main r&d team. But we also have a team in Switzerland where I am currently sitting. And we have also a team in Sweden. And we also people
in the US. Yeah, you guys are all around God that I didn't mean, pigeonholed you. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. Before we get into the conversation, Massimo just for the listeners out there. Give us a little background on who you are. And, you know, and then we'll just buzz on into the conversation.
Yeah, so my name. So my name is muscle banzi. I'm the co founder of Arduino. Which is, you know, my background is in electrical engineering. And then I did for many, many years at the software. And then I was I started teaching. I started on top of doing like professional work, I started teaching in a master's degree. And that's when I along with a number of other people, we figured out that there were there were ways where you could simplify the way you teach people about embedded development, with the objective of bringing in a bunch of people, they don't even know what embedded development is. Bring it into the into the community in a way, give them the tools so that they can build things with microcontrollers, with electronics. And I think, you know, that was kind of the impetus for Crona Gen creating Arduino as an open source project and also has the company. So that's that's the one
because because your Genesis Arduinos Genesis is just a simple fact that they were talking about how we educate, how do you how do we educate individuals people on on, on this technology? And I'll be the first to admit, I need education. And I don't have, quite frankly, any insights. But Arduino itself is made it user friendly to do that. Is that Is that an accurate sort of way of doing it? Because I go onto your website? I think it's great.
Yeah, I guess the idea is that there was a huge amount of incredibly powerful open source software, you know, start from the various version of GCC and all the other tools, but they were quite complicated to use for people that don't have like a strong background in kind of, you know, embedded level development. So we wanted to create a tool that we could give to people who do innovation because when we started working on Arduino, the objective was our students were creating the products of the future. They were, you know, interactive, they were connected. And obviously, it was very either you had like several years of experience in hardware, or it was quite complicated to to build things. So we created a tool that they It used to really try out what happens when you build a circuit when you build a system that works. So over the years, we refine these things. So that at the beginning was just basically programming, eight bit microcontrollers. Then it became connected products with 32 bit microcontrollers. And then in this kind of sort of path that we followed, what happened is that a bunch of the people that use the Arduino in different kinds of schools ended up in companies. And so they started to bring Arduino inside companies. So you can see ads from Apple. But they asked people if they have experienced with that queen or not, which is kind of kind of funny. But this is what happens when you create the tool that people use to get to learn and to build and all that if you lower the barrier to entry, you get a lot more people that are able to do these kind of things.
Yeah. And what's interesting is, is that Arduinos evolving, you have this platform that this product Arduino Pro, right. So there's, there's, there's this evolution that has taken place within Arduino. And it is really in a response to, if I had a nickel every time somebody talked to me about digital transformation. Yeah. You know, rich guy, right? And so the reality is, is that when we start talking about where you see Arduino going, it is it's a, I say it's a fertile opportunity and ground for a modeling and platform of Arduino. Is that sort of what you see?
Ah, yeah, actually, you know, one of the things that that, at some point was interesting to observe is the fact that a number of people have to bring these technologies to the companies and their factories, even their fields. And then at some point, several different ways to apply the Arduino technology in a professional environment started to appear. So the natural evolution of Arduino was to kind of follow this trend, and try and build tools that basically allow you to use the knowledge that you acquired in order with Arduino and apply it inside a piece of equipment inside the factory on a on a field in a farm. So the the general idea is bringing that kind of, you know, democratization of the access to these kinds of technology. Yeah. To the industry.
Did you? Did you see that happening? Like, did you just sort of where, where you had this sort of alumni of, of Arduino taught professionals going into these industrial environments, and then somebody says, hey, you know why I could take this and put it on here and start collecting data? And all I have to do is just, did you see that sort of happening? Or is it just sort of, wow, they Wow, they actually are doing it? And again, I
Oh, no, I totally saw it happen. And that's why we said, Okay, we have to, we have to follow this. And we have to enable this directly ourselves. Because we saw people, for example, using the Arduino programming environment on more sophisticated 32 bit microcontroller or more industrial style, development boards, but also feeling products that you can put in a piece of equipment. So we started to develop, for example, industrial controllers that you could sort of imagine, like some kind of a hybrid between a PLC and a more sort of connected type product. And the advantage there is, you know, because a bunch of people right now are going through this process of digital transformation. As you mentioned, it could be I'm a billionaire. Every time somebody mentions it. And you know, in Europe, they call it industry 4.0, or whatever now. And what happens is that a lot of small medium companies, but even large companies, sometimes they don't have the people to date, they can't find the people. There is a huge gap in the amount of people that are needed to do this, and the amount of people that you can find. So in a way, we realized that there was a huge amount of people that had Arduino skills. They if there was a version of Arduino, hardware and software and cloud that could work in a professional environment. They could transfer the skills and it's happening in a ton of companies. You know, we have several examples of people. There's even a company we work with, in Italy, who builds automation products for the automotive industry, that they used to do things with classic PLCs. And then they re basically rebooted the company with young people fresh out of university or even fresh out of the way. Some kind of trade schools or, you know, kind of trading programs, and, and they were able to basically rebuild everything around Arduino technology, and they basically get very, very good results.
How does it, you know, walk us through, it's like, okay, I'm a company, I'm, I've, wherever it's whatever, I'm having this interesting thought in my head, and I want to be, I want to, I want to take this line, digitize it, whatever I need to do. How do we get from that thought? Do I just approach Arduino? Do I just approach it and say, hey, I'm interested? How does that sort of process work?
Yeah. So I think this happens in a number of ways. So there are some companies that they decided they don't really want to deal very much internally. But they somehow want to be involved in the process. So they sometimes look for a system integrator, and we work with a number of system integrators. Some companies approach us directly and say, hey, you know, I have this problem that I want to solve, can I use your technology to do this? Normally, the kind of company that approached us for this is probably someone who builds machines or builds multiples. So we worked extensively with a company that builds industrial ovens. So we rebuilt completely the control system using one of our industrial products. So that's most mostly people who have cannot build to build multiple of the same thing. The people who are trying to work inside the company, they either go for a system integrator, there's also an increasing number of companies where they want to have the knowledge and the people internally, they want to be able to build things themselves, they want to be able to modify it, they want to be able to evolve with the technology, using people internally. And those people tend to sometimes even just buy the product from the store. And they find a lot of documentation online, where they see how to interface different things with with the hardware, we provide quite a few tutorials and examples of projects already built. And this is something that we're pursuing quite a lot in the near future, to provide essentially, you know, I described it the other day, the instance soup, no, you pour the, you put the thing in the cup, you put some hot water, you go and there is a project already made, you basically get the parts, and you can implement this in your company. So this last group of people, it's very interesting, because they're trying to acquire the skills internally, they're trying to build things internally. And they like Arduino, because easy to find people. They don't have to deal with real licensing on software tools or anything else. Everything is open source, so they can dig down whatever the you know, deep as deep as they like,
see, when we start talking about it, those are great points. And I see the value and I see the benefits of being able to be a part of a community, Arduino community and, and have the flexibility as a company to say, I need an integrator. So I can go over here, I want to I want to use the Arduino solution platform, I guess I just think that's there's some benefits there. But then I can also and I can also bring in the talent within my organization. And because of Arduino and the focus on training, I can keep these individuals learning growing and evolving and and, and that, to me is a value as a company because because I'm already dealing with people leaving. I mean, I'm already dealing with people I can't find, right. That's just sort of where I'm at right now. But now you're saying, Hey, come on board. If I'm a company come on board, we've got these. This solution we want to train you we're working hand in glove with Arduino. And you get to learn, learn and it's It just makes makes complete sense. What's the benefit of of open source?
Well, in a way that I believe there's several benefits that have been clearly identified in other parts of the tech world. So if you look at, for example, people who develop websites and web applications, Now none of them is starting from a proprietary piece of code anymore, everyone just goes starts from an open source framework, and builds from that, or large company lies, you know, Facebook, or Google or whatever, whenever they build a large software framework, they open source. So that kind of the web software world, it's all based on open source platforms that are kind of, you know, assembled like Lego blocks, and then you write your own application around it, obviously, the industrial world is a bit, you know, is slowly adopting that. But I guess the advantages, if you start from an open source platform, there's not there's no locking, you know, if you don't want to use the software on desk, this particular hardware, it's open source, you can always modify it, move it, if there is a bug that you can't really, you know, you don't have to wait for someone to kind of fix the bug if you want. And you have the skills or you know, someone who has it, they can dig deep into the software to figure it out. So for some situations, it's quite valuable. And people can also come to us and ask, you know, can you fix these programs, whatever. But if you're really in a hurry, and you have the skills, you can fix it yourself. If you want to switch hardware, you can do it because the software is yours. So there's a bunch of different aspects, where you have a much stronger ownership. We also saw people write on public forums that because of the crazy components shortage that is happening right now, people that used Arduino to develop the software of their application, were able to sweet quickly switch to a different hardware. Because maybe the hardware they were using that No, no, the processor wasn't available. No, we are lucky that we have a number of strategic partnerships with suppliers. So we have our hardware is available. But just in case, you can there's no strange licensing on the development environments you don't have, you're not really locked in into one operating system. You know, increasingly, developers are using Linux as a development platform, they don't really want to use Windows. You know, so there's a number of liberating factors in open source
C and what I see too is that okay, you get you get, get, you get big companies and the big companies are saying, Yeah, we want to go down this road and they do it. Okay, fine. The big companies. I'm always fascinated by the small to midsize companies that can truly benefit from the world of industry for Dotto, implement, take an incremental approach and saying, Hey, I'd like to sort of digitize this, whatever this is, and, and that's a strategic decision on their part, and then be able to expand from there. And what I see and correct me if I'm wrong, Massimo is that there's this ability to scale to write you're not, you're not just locked in Yagan, I can start small, I can say, Gosh, I feel good, and I am getting value out of this particular digital solution. And then I'm gonna go next level, and can I can I contact? I mean, can I card contact Arduino and say,
Get out? There are multiple ways to contact us. And so we you know, we offer different kinds of support for the people who are building ProSolutions. A lot of the people build things they don't get in touch with us because it simply works for them. So we can see that the products are going from the store, or our reseller because, you know, we have a very vast network of reseller, but the major capital suppliers, they have Arduino Pro Products now, so they people die them and they sometimes don't even contact us because they can just build it themselves. And I think there's one very interesting thing that you basically mentioned is that some people might start with by a simple application, they say, You know what, I need something simple that can read this value when bringing it to this kind of cloud platform, whatever, I need to send it over there. So they start with a simple thing, and it just works for them and they don't have to deal with a bunch of complicated No other issues. And then they suddenly they start to say they get the confidence to expand and they start to build larger. A lot of the people who build large projects, they started off with, like a little stupid thing, ya know, and sending it to the cloud.
Because I know if I was a business owner and I'm, I hear about industry for Dido, I hear about digital transformation, I hear about all of the stuff buzzing around my head. The the challenge I deal with is one where do I start? And then to, who do I trust? And then three, sort of like, Okay, now what, what's the technology? What? How do I pull all those elements together to achieve that? desired result? And and I'm having a hard time. What's what's a push? There's no push back on Arduino? Where do you see it going? I mean, I mean, I mean, I'd go with you guys.
A lot of people do. Obviously, obviously, I have to say that, you know, to be perfectly honest, clearly, sometimes some people seem sort of, you know, started off as a teaching platform, some some people clearly, you know, associate the name to data. And they don't, they don't really do their homework. Because when they start to look at the things that we build in the process, in terms of hardware, and software, and cloud, then they're like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. So we have num number of a number of these, you know, people having an epiphany because they start off with kind of an idea about Arduino. And then when they finally see, they are doing a process, after all, but this is completely different from what I thought,
That's interesting how we people humans, find ourselves into it, define our trench is, and then, and that sort of limits our vision sometimes. And I just see that happening. And and I don't know, I just think that what you guys are doing. I mean,
to me, one of the most hilarious things about the world of technology, and I've been working on this stuff for all my life, is the idea that technology sometimes are chosen, purely irrationally. Now, while actually human beings are human beings, and sometimes they apply their own biases, and they just choose a technology that they like, or they know about, or they don't really want to spend time figuring out what's available. What's interesting is that whenever the world goes through some kind of crisis moment, you start to look, you know, we have an uptake of a particular set of products right now, which is very interesting. And it's also due to the fact that major manufacturer of pills don't have product. So people are saying, hey, let's run this, and then Oh, my God, this thing, it's interesting. And then they start buying it, and they start to figure out, they can do things differently. But they are forced by the fact that the product they buy all the time just simply is not there. No. So or they need to innovate, design things in a different way. Now, so these critical moments in history are very, very good for you pushing people to look outside of their comfort zone and figure out
especially especially what we've been going through, I mean, I it's still it's very fluid out there. I I always mentioned that one, you first off, you need to educate if you're if you're in the world of industry, you need to you need to pursue education, learn all you can because the the technology and the innovation is happening. Right? It's happening now. Right. But I think the the biggest component of associated with all of this disruption has been the necessity to collaborate, finding those trusted individuals, having those conversations and and getting answers to, to problems that you might not have had pre COVID Now it's it is it's, it's an interesting time, and I kinda don't don't text me that I liked COVID. But I do like the fact that people are, are collaborating and having really interesting conversations to solve problems that it's just necessary. All right, we're gonna have to wrap it up there, Massimo? How does somebody get a hold of you?
Well, so our website is arduino.cc. So that's a r d u i n o.cc/pro. Yes, is where you find all the pro stuff. So if you go to arduino.cc/pro, you'll find everything to do with the processor is product of the software use cases, documentation, also examples of companies who applied technology so I think it's you know, it's a very good starting point,
I agree with you 100%. On that, listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Massimo Arduino, pro, everything that you can to get this this move. You have to be about that education you have to be about the collaboration and innovation and here's Arduino being able to provide pretty much all of that. And I that's what makes it so incredibly powerful. And if you're a manufacturer, if you're just a company looking to get into the digital world, you need to do it. You need to be a part of that. And I think that Arduino has an incredible model to help you be successful. Massimo, thank you very much.
Thank you. It was been a pleasure, right? It's
all mine, all mine on this side. All right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side and recognize that we're broadcasting from SMRP. But one of these days, man, we're going to be connected with Arduino. Alright, stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk and a hearty thank you to Massimo and team Arduino delivering solutions. In this digital transformation world check them out@arduino.cc important. All the information will of course be out on industrial talk. Alright, a couple of points of business. We're starting a new series called industrial revenue growth, right. And we're going to break it up into corporate strategy. And marketing technologies. And sales are going to be an overview too, as well. All three, just figure it out and come on over. And check out the industrial revenue grow. It is a step by step approach to driving revenue growth, because we need you to succeed. And these are just tools to help you get clarity in how to bring in more revenue. He does real talk. Easy peasy. click sign up. And it's on demand. It's like the Netflix of industry videos. Just Just go there. Get it, watch it whenever you can. But the reality is, is that we need to as a as a organization, as a community, we need for you to succeed and we're going to do everything we can because that's what we're passionate about. That is out in industrial talk.com. Also, remember we're going to be at conferences, go out to industrial talk, find out where we're going to be if you're going to be there, look us up. Let's have a conversation. A lot of fun happens at these conferences and we're here to do whatever is necessary to get your message out. amplify it because you are doing great things. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with Massimo and others at Arduino and you're going to change the world. Thank you very much, once again for joining. We're just we're stacked with a bunch of great conversations. So stay tuned. Do not go away.
Transcript
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to arduino.cc and you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to arduino.cc. Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey. arduino.cc Change is happening, and Deloitte is your partner, Deloitte, US and global network. They always deliver measurable, sustainable results for clients and communities. It's important to have a partner like Deloitte in your corner to manage and help you through this change. Find out more go to deloitte.com.
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 get as far
as Welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining the platform that is just absolutely passionate about your success in industry. You're bold, you're brave, you're daring greatly. You're changing lives, you're changing the world. Celebration is at the top of every conversation. Thank you very much for what you do. Arduino is in the hot seat. The gentleman's name is Massimo. And, you know you're in the world of digital transformation. And you're looking for some solutions. You're looking for those Sherpas you're looking for help. Arduino let's get cracking. Yeah, so the reality is, is that we were broadcasting from SMRP had a great conversation with Massimo team Arduino. And the reality is, is that if you're not in the digital transformation game, right? If you're not, and you're saying, Do I need to or don't I, if you want a business that is resilient, you need solutions, you need a digital transformation solution, you don't need a big bank right off the bat, you need to just be engaged, you need to continue to educate and collaborate. And the conversation with Arduino is just spot on massive, massive street cred out there. And they've been around for a long time, and they know exactly they've got I'm telling you, they have a team of incredible professionals out there just know they want to solve your problems. That's, that's the conversation we're gonna have. All right. Before we get into that conversation, as you know, we always go to conferences, right? You've seen it out there. You've you've you've seen, you know, the photos and pictures and videos and all of the great stuff that exists out there, you can tell that we were pretty passionate about being on site. And having those conversations with companies and individuals that are just helping people succeed, we're going to be at Fabtech. This is about a week or so yeah, about a week. And again, it's going to be great, where we've got a great booth, and we're going to be talking to some of the leaders within the world of manufacturing again, and just just support these companies because they're really trying to do the best they can to, to help solve problems. If you're saying you're so scattered, can't make it to Fabtech, which, you know, absolutely spot on. Go out to industrial talk, we are going to be at other events, just find out. If you see that we're at an event, and you're going to be at that event. It's easy. Just reach out and say Scott, I'm going to be at that event, I'd love to be able to have that conversation, boom, done. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. And the same thing, I see that you're going to be at whatever we want. We want to connect, we do a lot of wonderful things at these events. We do technology, speed dating, which is I gotta tell you, it's a lot of fun. And and because there's such a velocity that exists within industry, that highlighting technology, hiding, highlighting the innovation is just a real exciting time. So we just what we do, I'll just tell you what we do. We'll go to your booth. We'll find the right individual talk about that technology that you're you're showcasing. And we just have a quick conversation. We loaded up to LinkedIn, we tag everybody, boom, everybody wins. Everybody gets to see the technology that exists. I'm telling you, it's a lot of fun. And boy for me who loves to live that Discovery Channel life. I get to learn from The best and stay at the cutting edge of what people are thinking from an innovation and technology perspective. I can't say that I know everything. Much of it is way above my paygrade but it's exciting to be a part of that education and that learning and, and I highly recommend that you do that. So go out to industrial talk.com Find out where we're going to be chirping from a conference and look us up. Again, if you're in flight Fabtech look us up because well, we're going to be there and and all the information’s out there. Arduino, Massimo is in the hot seat. And one of the the areas that are just fascinating for if you pull on that string a little bit is how do everybody and I mean everybody, take advantage of the digital transformation world. If you dip your toes into the world, it's fine. But how do you begin to collect data? How do you begin to leverage the technology to be able to give you insights and actionable insights into the health of your assets right there.
Arduino all the contact information for Massimo and Arduino will be out of course on Industrial talk.com. Enjoy the conversation, Massimo Welcome to industrial talk, as you can tell, we are broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. And you guys need to be here about that. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No, yeah, no, totally. Next time, I'll make sure
you know it. My goal is to make sure that one of these conferences we're going to be able to get together and connect in person. That's, that's what I want. But you're not aturan. Right? Or do we not have time?
Sadly, I'm doing actually is scraping different places. So primo in Italy is the place where we have the main r&d team. But we also have a team in Switzerland where I am currently sitting. And we have also a team in Sweden. And we also people
in the US. Yeah, you guys are all around God that I didn't mean, pigeonholed you. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. Before we get into the conversation, Massimo just for the listeners out there. Give us a little background on who you are. And, you know, and then we'll just buzz on into the conversation.
Yeah, so my name. So my name is muscle banzi. I'm the co founder of Arduino. Which is, you know, my background is in electrical engineering. And then I did for many, many years at the software. And then I was I started teaching. I started on top of doing like professional work, I started teaching in a master's degree. And that's when I along with a number of other people, we figured out that there were there were ways where you could simplify the way you teach people about embedded development, with the objective of bringing in a bunch of people, they don't even know what embedded development is. Bring it into the into the community in a way, give them the tools so that they can build things with microcontrollers, with electronics. And I think, you know, that was kind of the impetus for Crona Gen creating Arduino as an open source project and also has the company. So that's that's the one
because because your Genesis Arduinos Genesis is just a simple fact that they were talking about how we educate, how do you how do we educate individuals people on on, on this technology? And I'll be the first to admit, I need education. And I don't have, quite frankly, any insights. But Arduino itself is made it user friendly to do that. Is that Is that an accurate sort of way of doing it? Because I go onto your website? I think it's great.
Yeah, I guess the idea is that there was a huge amount of incredibly powerful open source software, you know, start from the various version of GCC and all the other tools, but they were quite complicated to use for people that don't have like a strong background in kind of, you know, embedded level development. So we wanted to create a tool that we could give to people who do innovation because when we started working on Arduino, the objective was our students were creating the products of the future. They were, you know, interactive, they were connected. And obviously, it was very either you had like several years of experience in hardware, or it was quite complicated to to build things. So we created a tool that they It used to really try out what happens when you build a circuit when you build a system that works. So over the years, we refine these things. So that at the beginning was just basically programming, eight bit microcontrollers. Then it became connected products with 32 bit microcontrollers. And then in this kind of sort of path that we followed, what happened is that a bunch of the people that use the Arduino in different kinds of schools ended up in companies. And so they started to bring Arduino inside companies. So you can see ads from Apple. But they asked people if they have experienced with that queen or not, which is kind of kind of funny. But this is what happens when you create the tool that people use to get to learn and to build and all that if you lower the barrier to entry, you get a lot more people that are able to do these kind of things.
Yeah. And what's interesting is, is that Arduinos evolving, you have this platform that this product Arduino Pro, right. So there's, there's, there's this evolution that has taken place within Arduino. And it is really in a response to, if I had a nickel every time somebody talked to me about digital transformation. Yeah. You know, rich guy, right? And so the reality is, is that when we start talking about where you see Arduino going, it is it's a, I say it's a fertile opportunity and ground for a modeling and platform of Arduino. Is that sort of what you see?
Ah, yeah, actually, you know, one of the things that that, at some point was interesting to observe is the fact that a number of people have to bring these technologies to the companies and their factories, even their fields. And then at some point, several different ways to apply the Arduino technology in a professional environment started to appear. So the natural evolution of Arduino was to kind of follow this trend, and try and build tools that basically allow you to use the knowledge that you acquired in order with Arduino and apply it inside a piece of equipment inside the factory on a on a field in a farm. So the the general idea is bringing that kind of, you know, democratization of the access to these kinds of technology. Yeah. To the industry.
Did you? Did you see that happening? Like, did you just sort of where, where you had this sort of alumni of, of Arduino taught professionals going into these industrial environments, and then somebody says, hey, you know why I could take this and put it on here and start collecting data? And all I have to do is just, did you see that sort of happening? Or is it just sort of, wow, they Wow, they actually are doing it? And again, I
Oh, no, I totally saw it happen. And that's why we said, Okay, we have to, we have to follow this. And we have to enable this directly ourselves. Because we saw people, for example, using the Arduino programming environment on more sophisticated 32 bit microcontroller or more industrial style, development boards, but also feeling products that you can put in a piece of equipment. So we started to develop, for example, industrial controllers that you could sort of imagine, like some kind of a hybrid between a PLC and a more sort of connected type product. And the advantage there is, you know, because a bunch of people right now are going through this process of digital transformation. As you mentioned, it could be I'm a billionaire. Every time somebody mentions it. And you know, in Europe, they call it industry 4.0, or whatever now. And what happens is that a lot of small medium companies, but even large companies, sometimes they don't have the people to date, they can't find the people. There is a huge gap in the amount of people that are needed to do this, and the amount of people that you can find. So in a way, we realized that there was a huge amount of people that had Arduino skills. They if there was a version of Arduino, hardware and software and cloud that could work in a professional environment. They could transfer the skills and it's happening in a ton of companies. You know, we have several examples of people. There's even a company we work with, in Italy, who builds automation products for the automotive industry, that they used to do things with classic PLCs. And then they re basically rebooted the company with young people fresh out of university or even fresh out of the way. Some kind of trade schools or, you know, kind of trading programs, and, and they were able to basically rebuild everything around Arduino technology, and they basically get very, very good results.
How does it, you know, walk us through, it's like, okay, I'm a company, I'm, I've, wherever it's whatever, I'm having this interesting thought in my head, and I want to be, I want to, I want to take this line, digitize it, whatever I need to do. How do we get from that thought? Do I just approach Arduino? Do I just approach it and say, hey, I'm interested? How does that sort of process work?
Yeah. So I think this happens in a number of ways. So there are some companies that they decided they don't really want to deal very much internally. But they somehow want to be involved in the process. So they sometimes look for a system integrator, and we work with a number of system integrators. Some companies approach us directly and say, hey, you know, I have this problem that I want to solve, can I use your technology to do this? Normally, the kind of company that approached us for this is probably someone who builds machines or builds multiples. So we worked extensively with a company that builds industrial ovens. So we rebuilt completely the control system using one of our industrial products. So that's most mostly people who have cannot build to build multiple of the same thing. The people who are trying to work inside the company, they either go for a system integrator, there's also an increasing number of companies where they want to have the knowledge and the people internally, they want to be able to build things themselves, they want to be able to modify it, they want to be able to evolve with the technology, using people internally. And those people tend to sometimes even just buy the product from the store. And they find a lot of documentation online, where they see how to interface different things with with the hardware, we provide quite a few tutorials and examples of projects already built. And this is something that we're pursuing quite a lot in the near future, to provide essentially, you know, I described it the other day, the instance soup, no, you pour the, you put the thing in the cup, you put some hot water, you go and there is a project already made, you basically get the parts, and you can implement this in your company. So this last group of people, it's very interesting, because they're trying to acquire the skills internally, they're trying to build things internally. And they like Arduino, because easy to find people. They don't have to deal with real licensing on software tools or anything else. Everything is open source, so they can dig down whatever the you know, deep as deep as they like,
see, when we start talking about it, those are great points. And I see the value and I see the benefits of being able to be a part of a community, Arduino community and, and have the flexibility as a company to say, I need an integrator. So I can go over here, I want to I want to use the Arduino solution platform, I guess I just think that's there's some benefits there. But then I can also and I can also bring in the talent within my organization. And because of Arduino and the focus on training, I can keep these individuals learning growing and evolving and and, and that, to me is a value as a company because because I'm already dealing with people leaving. I mean, I'm already dealing with people I can't find, right. That's just sort of where I'm at right now. But now you're saying, Hey, come on board. If I'm a company come on board, we've got these. This solution we want to train you we're working hand in glove with Arduino. And you get to learn, learn and it's It just makes makes complete sense. What's the benefit of of open source?
Well, in a way that I believe there's several benefits that have been clearly identified in other parts of the tech world. So if you look at, for example, people who develop websites and web applications, Now none of them is starting from a proprietary piece of code anymore, everyone just goes starts from an open source framework, and builds from that, or large company lies, you know, Facebook, or Google or whatever, whenever they build a large software framework, they open source. So that kind of the web software world, it's all based on open source platforms that are kind of, you know, assembled like Lego blocks, and then you write your own application around it, obviously, the industrial world is a bit, you know, is slowly adopting that. But I guess the advantages, if you start from an open source platform, there's not there's no locking, you know, if you don't want to use the software on desk, this particular hardware, it's open source, you can always modify it, move it, if there is a bug that you can't really, you know, you don't have to wait for someone to kind of fix the bug if you want. And you have the skills or you know, someone who has it, they can dig deep into the software to figure it out. So for some situations, it's quite valuable. And people can also come to us and ask, you know, can you fix these programs, whatever. But if you're really in a hurry, and you have the skills, you can fix it yourself. If you want to switch hardware, you can do it because the software is yours. So there's a bunch of different aspects, where you have a much stronger ownership. We also saw people write on public forums that because of the crazy components shortage that is happening right now, people that used Arduino to develop the software of their application, were able to sweet quickly switch to a different hardware. Because maybe the hardware they were using that No, no, the processor wasn't available. No, we are lucky that we have a number of strategic partnerships with suppliers. So we have our hardware is available. But just in case, you can there's no strange licensing on the development environments you don't have, you're not really locked in into one operating system. You know, increasingly, developers are using Linux as a development platform, they don't really want to use Windows. You know, so there's a number of liberating factors in open source
C and what I see too is that okay, you get you get, get, you get big companies and the big companies are saying, Yeah, we want to go down this road and they do it. Okay, fine. The big companies. I'm always fascinated by the small to midsize companies that can truly benefit from the world of industry for Dotto, implement, take an incremental approach and saying, Hey, I'd like to sort of digitize this, whatever this is, and, and that's a strategic decision on their part, and then be able to expand from there. And what I see and correct me if I'm wrong, Massimo is that there's this ability to scale to write you're not, you're not just locked in Yagan, I can start small, I can say, Gosh, I feel good, and I am getting value out of this particular digital solution. And then I'm gonna go next level, and can I can I contact? I mean, can I card contact Arduino and say,
Get out? There are multiple ways to contact us. And so we you know, we offer different kinds of support for the people who are building ProSolutions. A lot of the people build things they don't get in touch with us because it simply works for them. So we can see that the products are going from the store, or our reseller because, you know, we have a very vast network of reseller, but the major capital suppliers, they have Arduino Pro Products now, so they people die them and they sometimes don't even contact us because they can just build it themselves. And I think there's one very interesting thing that you basically mentioned is that some people might start with by a simple application, they say, You know what, I need something simple that can read this value when bringing it to this kind of cloud platform, whatever, I need to send it over there. So they start with a simple thing, and it just works for them and they don't have to deal with a bunch of complicated No other issues. And then they suddenly they start to say they get the confidence to expand and they start to build larger. A lot of the people who build large projects, they started off with, like a little stupid thing, ya know, and sending it to the cloud.
Because I know if I was a business owner and I'm, I hear about industry for Dido, I hear about digital transformation, I hear about all of the stuff buzzing around my head. The the challenge I deal with is one where do I start? And then to, who do I trust? And then three, sort of like, Okay, now what, what's the technology? What? How do I pull all those elements together to achieve that? desired result? And and I'm having a hard time. What's what's a push? There's no push back on Arduino? Where do you see it going? I mean, I mean, I mean, I'd go with you guys.
A lot of people do. Obviously, obviously, I have to say that, you know, to be perfectly honest, clearly, sometimes some people seem sort of, you know, started off as a teaching platform, some some people clearly, you know, associate the name to data. And they don't, they don't really do their homework. Because when they start to look at the things that we build in the process, in terms of hardware, and software, and cloud, then they're like, Oh, my God, this is amazing. So we have num number of a number of these, you know, people having an epiphany because they start off with kind of an idea about Arduino. And then when they finally see, they are doing a process, after all, but this is completely different from what I thought,
That's interesting how we people humans, find ourselves into it, define our trench is, and then, and that sort of limits our vision sometimes. And I just see that happening. And and I don't know, I just think that what you guys are doing. I mean,
to me, one of the most hilarious things about the world of technology, and I've been working on this stuff for all my life, is the idea that technology sometimes are chosen, purely irrationally. Now, while actually human beings are human beings, and sometimes they apply their own biases, and they just choose a technology that they like, or they know about, or they don't really want to spend time figuring out what's available. What's interesting is that whenever the world goes through some kind of crisis moment, you start to look, you know, we have an uptake of a particular set of products right now, which is very interesting. And it's also due to the fact that major manufacturer of pills don't have product. So people are saying, hey, let's run this, and then Oh, my God, this thing, it's interesting. And then they start buying it, and they start to figure out, they can do things differently. But they are forced by the fact that the product they buy all the time just simply is not there. No. So or they need to innovate, design things in a different way. Now, so these critical moments in history are very, very good for you pushing people to look outside of their comfort zone and figure out
especially especially what we've been going through, I mean, I it's still it's very fluid out there. I I always mentioned that one, you first off, you need to educate if you're if you're in the world of industry, you need to you need to pursue education, learn all you can because the the technology and the innovation is happening. Right? It's happening now. Right. But I think the the biggest component of associated with all of this disruption has been the necessity to collaborate, finding those trusted individuals, having those conversations and and getting answers to, to problems that you might not have had pre COVID Now it's it is it's, it's an interesting time, and I kinda don't don't text me that I liked COVID. But I do like the fact that people are, are collaborating and having really interesting conversations to solve problems that it's just necessary. All right, we're gonna have to wrap it up there, Massimo? How does somebody get a hold of you?
Well, so our website is arduino.cc. So that's a r d u i n o.cc/pro. Yes, is where you find all the pro stuff. So if you go to arduino.cc/pro, you'll find everything to do with the processor is product of the software use cases, documentation, also examples of companies who applied technology so I think it's you know, it's a very good starting point,
I agree with you 100%. On that, listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Massimo Arduino, pro, everything that you can to get this this move. You have to be about that education you have to be about the collaboration and innovation and here's Arduino being able to provide pretty much all of that. And I that's what makes it so incredibly powerful. And if you're a manufacturer, if you're just a company looking to get into the digital world, you need to do it. You need to be a part of that. And I think that Arduino has an incredible model to help you be successful. Massimo, thank you very much.
Thank you. It was been a pleasure, right? It's
all mine, all mine on this side. All right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side and recognize that we're broadcasting from SMRP. But one of these days, man, we're going to be connected with Arduino. Alright, stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk and a hearty thank you to Massimo and team Arduino delivering solutions. In this digital transformation world check them out@arduino.cc important. All the information will of course be out on industrial talk. Alright, a couple of points of business. We're starting a new series called industrial revenue growth, right. And we're going to break it up into corporate strategy. And marketing technologies. And sales are going to be an overview too, as well. All three, just figure it out and come on over. And check out the industrial revenue grow. It is a step by step approach to driving revenue growth, because we need you to succeed. And these are just tools to help you get clarity in how to bring in more revenue. He does real talk. Easy peasy. click sign up. And it's on demand. It's like the Netflix of industry videos. Just Just go there. Get it, watch it whenever you can. But the reality is, is that we need to as a as a organization, as a community, we need for you to succeed and we're going to do everything we can because that's what we're passionate about. That is out in industrial talk.com. Also, remember we're going to be at conferences, go out to industrial talk, find out where we're going to be if you're going to be there, look us up. Let's have a conversation. A lot of fun happens at these conferences and we're here to do whatever is necessary to get your message out. amplify it because you are doing great things. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with Massimo and others at Arduino and you're going to change the world. Thank you very much, once again for joining. We're just we're stacked with a bunch of great conversations. So stay tuned. Do not go away.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
