Spreadsheet: "Date Added" Column, More Boards

So many people have asked for a column on the Arduino-compatible board spreadsheet showing the date when each board was added, so I put that on the spreadsheet this week. I had to sift through the revisions, but it wasn't too much of a pain.

Also new to the spreadsheet:

• Six boards by the Indian company Bhasha, all through-hole except for the FTDI USB chips, mostly simple designs but it's clear from the traces that the boards were reworked slightly. Interesting to see the "Severino" Single Sided Serial V3 design offered for sale, something I haven't seen elsewhere.
• Zigduino by Logos Electromechanical is offering their first run of IEEE 802.15.4 radio-equipped boards for $70. I've been looking forward to these boards coming out, but the price seems high given that you could buy an Arduino FIO for $25 and an XBee module for $19, so $44 total, or a Freakduino Chibi for $33. I hope the high price is only for this first run and that it is lower when Logos goes into full scale production, but I also wonder if it's as easy to use as the widely available XBee modules for which there are many example sketches available. It does have XBee "Pro" capabilities though, and I'm not familiar enough with 802.15.4 to really compare it to other offerings. I look forward to more complete documentation on its specs along with full design files since it's unclear what its equipment and capabilities are.

Arduino: What Direction?

In spite of the year-end hype surrounding the Arduino Uno, and while I like seeing Arduino hit its 1.0 release, other Arduino-compatible boards get me more excited. If Arduino is a low hurdle access architecture for the ATmega**8 line of microcontrollers, I'd prefer the extra circuitry to be optional:

• Power regulation: why embed regulation in each board when it's not always needed? And what about regulation or step-up converters for battery-powered projects?
• Board voltage: There are good reasons to use 3.3V or 5V depending on applications, why are so few boards switchable?
• Programming interface: While USB (and its decoder chips) is ubiquitous, so (still) are serial and ethernet, and (increasingly) XBee. Why not make the programming/serial interface optional or external?
• Real estate: There is only so much room in the standard Arduino form factor. Why not use that space for useful circuitry that would be tricky to locate externally?

$30 is a fair price for a board with USB, power regulation, and automatic power switching, but half of that cost is not for the Arduino-capability! This is neatly demonstrated by the $13 Diavolino by Evil Mad Scientist Labs, which has no power regulation (but pads if you want to install it) and a header for the now standard 6-pin FTDI USB-serial breakout interface. Arduino-compatible boards' regulation, voltage, programming interfaces, and extra features are listed on my comprehensive spreadsheet.

Here are a few boards comparably-priced to the Uno that may be more useful for real applications since they have the Arduino core but different circuits for power, communication, or extra capabilities:

• Wiseduino ($34 kit) has a DS1307 real time clock with backup battery, a 256Kbit EEPROM chip, header pins for the Adafruit XBee adapter, and 6-pin FTDI cable interface.
• Freakduino Chibi ($33 kit) has built-in 802.15.4 (XBee) radio and optional ($3!) battery voltage regulation so you can input from .7V to 6V.
• Arduino FIO ($25) has a MAX1555 LiPo charger, power regulation, and an XBee socket.

What do you want in an Arduino-compatible board? Please leave a comment!