A Merry Christmas Indeed

My wife, the ever-wonderful Amy Hale, gave me a wonderful Christmas gift.  I now have an Arduino Duemilanove, an XPort shield kit, and a LED art kit.  Of course, the first thing I’ve considered is doing some web data-driven light art, so I just need to figure out what data I want to capture and visualize.  That’s the beauty of Arduino systems…everything is simple, componentized, and ready to use.  The high level language used to program the platform, Processing, really leaves you asking questions about the application of the platform instead of the implementation.  I don’t believe it’s the best way in the world to learn about the design of an embedded system, but for getting something done, it’s a system which is hard to beat.

A note to prospective gift buyers, though.  The XPort shield kit is just the platform for an Ethernet module but it is not an Ethernet module on its own.  The supplier may be offering the module as part of an extended kit, but the build instructions at Make suggest buying an XPort which will cost an additional $30 or so (after shipping, etc).  So, just remember this if you want to make the gift all-inclusive.

The other great thing is that now I have an Arduino, which I was actually planning on using to make a touch-screen prototype at work.  Again, the focus on componentization and a high-level programming environment makes this a good platform for quick prototyping.  When you can buy a TouchShield, drop it on the shield connector, and grab an extra Processing library and start looking at your prototype application…well, that’s a rapid prototyping dream.

I’ve been doing more part sourcing research on my completely made-from-scratch platform.  I’ll post about that separately.