Yesterday, I got myself an Arduino experimenters kit. As a side note, the kits sold at FOSDEM come from Italy and support decent working conditions, something that is quite nice. I hope to have contributed a bit.
The kit is of good quality and there is all one may need to get started. What I do have in mind is to use the Arduino and the electronics to work on bridging a Microsoft Kinect device with Squeak Smalltalk and the Arduino. Software support exists for both of them in Squeak and it would be great to have fun activating my Lego Mindstorms through gesturing in front of a Kinect and controlling the little Lego blocks.

This is going to bring several of my ‘past lifes’ together. In fact I have the full electronics kit (including soldering iron, drill, components, and what not) that I haven’t been using for some time. Last time, I was making ISA cards for building 286-based oscilloscopes and AD/DA based boards. This means a loooong time. Anyway, ICs do not die,  they just lay there, waiting for new projects.

And now, as I have a brand new office with lots of space, I can devote a table for Arduino projects. Stay tuned, as I’ll have a number of posts describing how things are going.

Here are some pictures:

Kit Contents

The Arduino Uno board