There are so many people that underestimated the potential success for Arduino, and the rPi. Also, experienced hardware folks tend to forget how unforgiving hardware can be to non-hardware folks, and beginners; a good example of which was posted here the other day. http://www.jwz.org/curtain/
> so many people that underestimated the potential success for Arduino, and the rPi
I like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi very much, but they are not the pioneers of this idea.
There have been a whole bunch of electronic prototyping systems aimed at hobbyists in the decade before Arduino and Raspberry Pi hit it big.
Just to name a few: Parallax Basic Stamp, the Micromint PicStic and Domino, X-10, MIT Media Lab's Programmable Bricks, Gumstix, Phidgets, Teensy USB Development Board, littleBits, LEGO Mindstorms, Bug Labs.
I was cheering for several of the above, and they met with various degrees of success. It seemed obvious to me that they should become enormously popular, as big as the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, but they didn't. There were probably dozens more that folded up and disappeared.
What I'm trying to say is that it took a lot of iterations of design, business model, functionality, and being at the right time before a couple companies found just the right formula to make it really big.
