When you think about Samsung, the first products that come to mind are probably phones or televisions, not Maker-focused electronics. Today, with their announcement at Internet of Things World, Samsung has entered the Maker world with their ARTIK platform, an Arduino compatible family of devices targeted towards Internet of Things applications.

Currently there are three ARTIK devices: The ARTIK 1, ARTIK 5, and ARTIK 10. All are multi-core ARM processors with built in Bluetooth Low Energy. The ARTIK 5 and 10 also include Wi-Fi, BT, Zigbee, and Thread wireless connections.

Combining this powerful hardware with the ease of use and existing knowledge base of the Arduino platform, Samsung hopes to make development of IoT platforms easy to get off the ground:

“Our approach is to provide open platforms to help accelerate the development of IoT for our customers, developers, and end users” said Curtis Sasaki, Vice President of Ecosystem, Samsung Electronics. “Being part of Arduino’s Certified Program helps millions of developers familiar with Arduino IDE to take advantage and focus all of their energy to building new and innovative products.”

You can sign up now until the end of the month to join their Alpha program.