More frequently than ever, prototypes created using Arduino become products, and the Arduino brand is used to carry ideas of quality and easy of use to these products. Often though, the self-proclaimed Arduino compatibility does not take the form of an innovative and valuable product. That’s why Arduino started Arduino@Heart program. The program allows Arduino to build strong partnerships with products and people we appreciate and brings forward these relationships communicating them clearly with a symbol and some actions visible to a broader audience.

Many companies and individual makers create products based on the Arduino technology and would like to be clearly identified as supporters of the Arduino project. Arduino@Heart allows them to show they are part of the Arduino ecosystem while receiving support and recognition from Arduino. Arduino@Heart is a relationship of mutual help: Arduino supports makers and companies with visibility; at the same time, interesting products show how Arduino can be used in cool sustainable ways.

The Arduino@Heart program is a Brand License Agreement designed for makers and companies wanting to make their products easily recognisable as based on the Arduino technology with a fee for them reaching the maximum of 5% of the wholesale price. Arduino supports @Heart partners through promotion of their brand, products and content on its site and social networks with links to documentation and tutorials. This helps ensure that partners’ brands are marketed to the right target groups and are clearly associated with Arduino.

The program is available for any product  supported by the Arduino Development environment, currently including these Atmel’s microcontrollers:

• ATMega328 clocked at 8 or 16 MHz
• ATMega1280 clocked at 16 MHz
• ATMega2560 clocked at 16 MHz
• ATMega32U4 clocked at 16MHz
• SAM3X

The first companies involved are littleBits Electronics; Smart Citizen; Bare Conductive; Aesthetec Studio; primo.io; EarthMake.

Ayah Bdeir, founder/CEO of littleBits Electronics Inc. said:

“littleBits is thrilled to be a part of the new Arduino@Heart program. An Arduino littleBits module has been a popular request for quite a while and we are huge fans of the Arduino ecosystem and community. The littleBits Arduino module will simultaneously increase the power of the littleBits library by adding programming capabilities and make the Arduino environment easier to get involved in by eliminating the need for soldering or wiring. We can’t wait to see what people with make with it!”

Also Tomas Diez, co-founder of Smart Citizen Kit, is enthusiastic:

“In relation with our participation at @Heart program, we think its a great model to boost the efforts done by small teams of developers all over the world who are using Arduino as a framework but optimising the hardware and software for specific applications. This could be a great platform to encourage developers to release new products that the Arduino community will love.”

Becky Pilditch, founder of Bare Conductive, explained her experience with Arduino:

“From the day we received our first Uno as students, until the development of our very own Touch Board, we have been keenly aware that Arduino is synonymous with innovation, thoughtful design and quality for the open source community. We are therefore honoured and very excited to be invited to participate in the Arduino@Heart programme. Placing the Touch Board alongside other Arduino products confirms that we have created something truly unique. This has only been possible by building on the Arduino platform. The Arduino@Heart programs offers us a chance to both give credit and contribute to evolving the open source space that Arduino has pioneered.”

Mark Argo, Aesthetec Studio, added:

“We designed the Little Robot Friends so that they would serve as a novel entry-point into the world of programming and electronics. By making sure our products are Arduino-compatible, we ensure that our users have access to a wonderful set of tutorials and other tools to extend their learning further.”

Filippo Yacob and Matteo Loglio, primo.io Limited, said:

“As a maker-centric company, we mostly concentrate on ideating and developing products; we believe that this partnership could give us much more visibility through marketing and advertising. Moreover, from our point of view being part of the Arduino@Heart program would increase the visibility in the community and being recognized as ‘Arduino approved’ would stimulate us to improve our processes and products to a quality level that would match the Arduino brand. As a consequence, this makes our product more accessible and user friendly to a community that is already familiar with the technology”.

Finally, EarthMake Firestarter Randy Schafer exclaimed:

“the arLCD smart 3.5 color touchscreen LCD Arduino combo board brings smart phone like user interfaces to the Maker community through the Arduino@Heart program. In my 35 years as an electronics entrepreneur I have not seen this type of vibrant creative community since the dawn of the personal computer age”.