I’m now selling my first kit! The Breaduino is a $10 Arduino clone you build from scratch. Unlike most kits, there’s no circuit board: you provide a breadboard (even the teensy half-length ones will work), and build your own Arduino from scratch.
I’m really excited about the prospects for this kit. It’s perfect for a classroom setting, which is a big deal to me. Any electronics classroom has everything you need to build this, and it can run off a 9V when completed, letting everyone start their kit up, instead of taking turns on the bench supply. More importantly, students can see exactly how it’s hooked up: it’s pretty darned simple. As an instructor, you can easily explain the purpose of every component during assembly, and still have a classroom of the things assembled in a half-hour session. I’d love it if these made their way into classrooms (email me for educational discounts). At $10/each, the Breaduino kit is also pretty easy in terms of materials fees. Students will also need a 9V clip ($0.10) and a breadboard ($8 for something nice at Adafruit), so, for $20 apiece, they can take home their handiwork.
It’s also great for those of us who work on Arduino-powered art pieces and gizmos. Dropping a Duemilanove ($30) into a project is a commitment, especially when the rest of it is made from free-to-you scavenged parts. This kit is designed for a breadboard, but it’s totally amenable to solder-down protoboard for permanent installation. You can do all your prototyping on a breadboard with a Breaduino, then transfer it exactly as-is to a protoboard. It’s also really small-footprint, so you can use a board only a fraction larger than the Atmega328 chip itself. The only way to get appreciably smaller is to go surface mount (but that kit’s a ways off). I’m hoping to do cheaper soon, too, by removing a few components from this kit.
Building the Breaduino kit has been interesting. It’s been almost entirely a matter of documentation: putting together an Arduino clone is fantastically straightforward. Between Atmel doing a fantastic job of making an easy-to-use microcontroller and the clear schematics from the Arduino team, it went together quickly. After that, there was a bit of work putting together a bill of materials, and a big order from Mouser. Then I had to document it. And make a video. And a website. And then redo a bunch of that, because it looked awful. Finally, all that work was done, and it came time to bag up kits. Oh, wait, I need a sticker design, and and and…
Happily, a lot of that work was in learning. I’ve now learned a lot, and will have a few more kits coming out soon: a 48-input analog input shield, another couple of different low-cost Arduino clones, and, eventually, the project that kicked all this off: a near-space ballooning shield. I’ve got a handful more ideas for things, too: a benchtop power supply with LCD readout powered by an Atmega, the ever-popular automatic bike lights, a plug-and-play relay board, an RFID appliance shield, an all-surface-mount Arduino clone… That said, I’d love more ideas. I’d love any kit suggestions people might have, leave a comment!