Arduino-Compatibles on Make:

Phillip Torrone posted in his Soapbox column on Make: yesterday: 'My Top 10 Favorite Arduino-Compatible “Clones” and Derivatives' with examples showing the broad spectrum of board variants. All of them (except the Menta) were already on my Arduino-compatible boards spreadsheet, and after commenting with a link, I've been inundated with emails suggesting other boards to add-- wonderful!!

Yesterday I added:

• Femtoduino: Fabio Varesano's tiny 328-based board with .05" pin pitch.
• Menta by Adafruit fits in an Altoids tin, has a prototyping area and is shield-compatible!
• Minuino is another fine Spikenzie Labs Arduino-compatible board with as few components as possible and the smallest footprint to accommodate shields.
• ReaDIYmate is a Kickstarter project which Seeed is pre-selling, including WiFi, MP3 decoding, a MicroSD slot, and audio amplifier... wow! BUT: the Kickstarter isn't funded yet! Go support this cool board!! Update 4/26/12: I did!! Update 4/29/12: It got funded! $27,143 of the $25K goal, excellent!!

Suggested boards I'll look into: AllgaierShops Breadboard Adapter (BYO ATmega), SMDuino (design only), MHVBoard (also design only), two boards from Ro-Bot-X Designs, JeeNode Micro, and maybe Akafuino X and a few other xmega boards which are not strictly Arduino-compatible (yet?).

New Workshop!

We moved recently, and one of the features that drew us to our new home was a sun room in the back, about 9'x15', full of light and perfect for a workshop!

One corner is ideal for the laser, with a dryer vent for routing its (filtered) fumes outside. With two rolling racks for storage and two desks, I hope we'll have room for a small heavy bench and drill press stand. Good thing the Printrbot is (er, will be) small, we have big plans for this (not so) little room.

Funny to look at my "Workshop!" post from two years ago, most of those projects haven't advanced much, but the grinder timer has gone through a few versions and the flight suit ended up being by far my most complicated project so far.