Arduino is both a producer, a type of device (monoboard computer), and a community.

The history of Arduino began in 2005 when a group of teachers and students from the University of Ivrea (Italy) decided to develop and build a simple, low-cost development kit for educational purposes, based on the popular, 8-bit ATMEL AVR microcontroller. Both the hardware platform and the software had to be (and are) completely open (open source). This resulted in enormous popularity and the creation of a user community.

As a manufacturer , Arduino currently offers several dozen development kits that use the ATMEL AVR and ARM microcontrollers and a large number of expansion boards (the so-called shields).