I just got a new Arduino Uno board this morning, and got bitten by a strange message in the Arduino IDE (version 1.6.3 from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software) when uploading a first test program:
This board comes from an uncertified manufacturer
Since the board comes from a trusted distributor (Lextronic), I was pretty surprised!
The reason behind the madness
Searching for this error message, I was even more surprised to discover that this is a side effect of a split between two Arduino "kingdoms":
- arduino.cc, where I downloaded the Arduino IDE. They use the Arduino™ logo.
- arduino.org, which manufactured my "original made in Italy" board. They use the Arduino ® logo. Their board can also be recognized by the Vendor ID
0x2A03.
I made a side-by-side picture comparison of the boards, using photos from the respective websites (the logo difference is particularly small: click to see it fullscreen).
How subtle! But behind this surprisingly minor cosmetic difference, I found a good report of the present situation (as of March 2015) in this article: http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/. It seems things are getting tensed (trademark lawsuits).
In practice
I shouldn't forget to say that, apart from the annoyingly frightening warning message, my "uncertified" board from arduino.org is in perfect condition and works perfectly with the current arduino.cc IDE!
(maybe future releases will behave differently, especially with new generation of boards developed separately)
It's sad that probably many people will get bitten by this quite misleading message in the coming months.
Yes, how annoying and badly thought through.
Plugged in my straight out of thevArduino box Uno Rev.3 from Farnell UK only to get COM 17 "uncertified etc.", plus COM 1 is now "uncertified".
This is on 1.6.1 (haven't got round to messing it up with 1.6.4)
As a vocal genuine Arduino user (all pukka boards) and fierce opponent of the copied rubbish (the clue is in the silk screen, usually), it p***s me off to get stuff like this.
Much as I appreciate all things Arduino which helped me get off the ground, this is one annoying little message I can do without.