Arduino Alternatives

Comments discuss Arduino microcontroller boards, their ecosystem, libraries, and community compared to cheaper alternatives like ESP32 or Black Pill for hobbyist prototyping and projects.

➡️ Stable 0.7x Hardware
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Keywords

hard.It LLM SPI PIC32 youtube.com IDE ESP32 PLC TOS pigweed.dev arduino pins libraries board hobbyist projects project ide qualcomm nice

Sample Comments

ianbishop Oct 6, 2009 View on HN

Aren't arduinos a fraction of the cost and have a much larger community?

wiradikusuma Apr 19, 2014 View on HN

What can you do with it that you can't with Arduino?

marblar May 2, 2013 View on HN

What do you suggest in arduino's place?

muvlon Dec 15, 2025 View on HN

People are discussing Arduino alternatives, so yes, we are firmly within hobbyist territory.

pbandhoney Oct 8, 2025 View on HN

It's not the hardware but the ecosystem, libraries and support which is available. Sure there are alternatives like platformio but when you're learning most of the stuff out there eg youtube use Arduino IDE and libs. And just try and get an LLM to produce code based on Espressif libraries not Arduino lols...

dennyshess May 19, 2015 View on HN

I prefer Arduino, but may be just cause i do very basic things :)

abledon Dec 2, 2018 View on HN

What board / software is the current leader in this space? Is there a brand akin to Arduino ?

minthd Aug 13, 2015 View on HN

Probably the arduino - with the open source libraries and such.

HeyLaughingBoy Jun 10, 2022 View on HN

Remember that Arduino is OSHW so clones & alternate implementations are everywhere at far lower cost. You're better off starting with a Black Pill or ESP32 based unit these days anyway. The overall ecosystem and common framework is far more valuable than any individual piece of hardware.

zbit Oct 11, 2025 View on HN

it's as sybolic as buying Arduino