74 Pink LED's: What To Do?

Dear reader, I need a spark of an idea!

Years ago, deep in the throes of a solder fume jag, I bought TWO "1-31-07 Memorial" kits from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: one Ignignokt, one Err (seen below, on the moon). Wikipedia: "2007 Boston bomb scare" article linked here for posterity.

The Mooninite kits are the same except for the different bags of LED's, and while I soldered up Ingingot in no time (at right), Err's kit became a parts donor. In shuffling through some old parts, I just found its big bag of BIG 10mm pink LED's-- says 68 but I counted 74. So big! So PINK!!! They scream for a project of their own.  Free association... LED's make flashy things... flashy things for Burning Man... boogie at Pink Mammoth.... er, do they need a sign?

What would you do with 74 BIG PINK LED's?!

Spreadsheet Edits

I've made some changes to my Arduino-compatible boards spreadsheet lately: I added a few boards, removed boards which are no longer available, and made some general changes.

Added:

	Stripduino by TinkerAct! has a small SMD area for its Arduino-compatible core, with IO pins in a line next to a stripboard area for on-board prototyping. There was an initial issue with the name of the board, but it seems straightened out now, and the design is lovely-- nothing extraneous. It reminds me of one of my favorite boards, Prototino by Spikenzie Labs.
	"Drum Kit - Kit AI" by SpikenzieLabs, a "maybe not" Arduino-compatible board for creating a MIDI 6-pad drum kit using piezo sensors stuck to just about anything.
	rEDI Education Board by Rogue Robotics is a prototyping board with buttons, LED's, a piezo speaker and volume knob, real time clock, high-powered 5V voltage regulator, servo headers, and a breadboard area. Also "maybe not" Arduino-compatible since it runs an ATmega644P, so it needs a custom bootloader.

Removed:

• A bunch of boards by Fundamental Logic which apparently stopped accepting orders in May of 2010. That makes me sad since they offered some interesting boards, but thankfully the designs are still online for reference. My favorites: iDuino, StickDuino, MPGuino.
• Modified Pico was a very compact, breadboard-friendly Duemilanove-compatible board. Thankfully details (including design files) are still available.
• Rampage Robot Base V4 was an Arduino-powered robot platform with headers for a shield. Looks like its creator has moved on to more complex microcontrollers.
• Zuccherino by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories was to be "a low-cost, scalable, and extremely versatile open-source motion control platform," but the project has not had an update in a while. I look forward to more from this project.
• "Flexi" was an inexpensive breadboard-friendly clone, not sure what happened but the domain now hosts a useless/spammy link page.

Changes:

• I just added a "By" column for designer, author or manufacturer. I'd like it to be simply "Author," but some companies [cough] mostly sell other peoples' designs, so I'm not sure whom to credit.
• I'd like to add more information about when boards were edited or checked, but wading through the revision history in Google Docs is a pain. A few people have suggested this and I like the idea, but I can't figure out how to track down the details.
• I updated a bunch of boards' links, prices, and chip; a few use ATmega328s but used to be ATmega168s.

As always, please email me with any suggestions or corrections!

EMSL "Diavolino"!

Windell from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories ("EMSL") announced a new Arduino-compatible board today: Diavolino!

Designed to be programmed with an FTDI USB cable (6-pin), the awesome-looking $13 kit comes with just enough to get started, including an ATmega328 pre-loaded with the Arduino bootloader. Pin headers cost an extra $1.50, and you can power it with an optional $1 3xAA battery box with switch, which should supply 4.5V (using alkalines).

Very cool kit from some very cool people, and (according to my Arduino-compatible board spreadsheet,) currently the lowest-priced way to get access to the big wide world of Arduino shields.

Update 6/24: Added the EMSL Peggy 2LE and Bulbdial Clock to the spreadsheet, though they're "maybe not" really Arduino-compatible :)