SparkFun Forums

[MattiasF]

I just found the smARtDUINO kickstarter page and I'd love to pitch you to at least create a few breakout boards based on smARtBUS Open I/O!

Video:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fai ... s-manufact

Specs:
http://smartduino.com/smartbus/

This would allow us to abstract away power, sensors, actuators, displays, (multi) processing in a very compact yet expandable way. It seems like the best evolution of the Arduino+shield success story I've seen so far.

What does everyone think? (Skip the drama and focus on the design

Cheers,
Mattias

[SFE-Toni]

Thanks for pointing this out to us! We missed the Kickstarter, but I brought this to the attention of our parts gurus.

[MattiasF]

I'm actually considering a low 100x run of prototype boards myself instead of waiting. The kickstart backers are almost falling over between anticipation and disappointment waiting this long.

I bought a few F+M HIROSE DF9-31 connectors from Mouser and they are pretty tiny and SMT only:
http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDet ... 9-31S-1V32
http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDet ... 9-31P-1V32

The Arduino shield form factor was great but it's really too bulky for anything portable or elegant. The deluge of various new MPUs such as TinyAVR, Programmable XBee, CortexARM etc, makes me really want to be able to swap in and out three parts of my design.

1. Processing: AVR, Cortex, Prog.XBee
"Oh a new processor! Let me swap that in for more processing, less power, more pins"

2. Power: 3.3v, 5v, battery, wallwart, USB-power
"Ok let me try my design with my USB board first and then swap in a battery+solar charger module at the end"

3. Connectivity: USB, I2C, SPI, GPIO, Protoboard, Aduino shield adapter etc..
"Nice. These pre-made connector boards allow me to prototype my code quickly. Once everything works I might put all my sensors and actuators on a single protoboard to optimize size. I can always move it to a new design later or add another board for more connectivity"

These are the three segments of design I'd love to modularize better. An initial proto board with the HiROSE connectors and their 60-something (A+B) lines exposed as PTH would go a long way to get started since we could create our own processing, power and connectivity boards...

Cheers!
Mattias

[Ross Robotics]

I must admit, I really don't like the smartduino. All you are learning is how to plug things in and the programming, of course. You will learn nothing about circuits.