Phenomenon is an overused and overloaded term, but somehow it seems appropriate for Arduino—an
endeavor that has caught the attention of an astonishingly wide range of people and provided
opportunities for those who might otherwise have never picked up a soldering iron or written a single
line of code. From dyed-in-the-wool hardware hackers to web page developers, robotics enthusiasts to
installation artists, textile students to musicians: all can be found in the Arduino community. The
versatility of the platform encompassing both hardware and software, combined with its inherent
openness, has captured the imagination of tens of thousands of developers.