It’s great that you are stocking the Arduino and Wiring boards.
One thing I’d really like to suggest that would help open up the Arduino platform further would be if you could produce some of the shield designs that are being created to go along with the basic Arduino board.
I’m sure the Sparkfun folks have seen them but for others these are at…
There is a copy-left design for a very nice motor control board and I would particularly like to see Sparkfun make and stock these prototyping Shield layouts…
… one is for a breadboard and the other gives perf board space.
These prototyping shields appear to be Creative Commons license and are designed by Tom Igoe (“tigoe”) who I believe is active in the Arduino/Wiring area and affiliated with NYU.
Tom and others are publishing the Eagle PCB design files but it would be great if Sparkfun could get these produced. They could be offered as bare PCBs, kits of parts or fully assembled – whatever makes sense to you.
A $30 Arduino with ability to build and keep multiple projects on Perf Board Shields would be a great hobbyist platform
There are some other nice Shield designs described on the site that might make great follow ups over time.
Tom Igoe is a dear friend of SFE and an avid Arduino developer. The shields principal is just starting to get traction. There was talk at Sketching 06 (www.sketching06.com) that there were all sorts of shields being worked on. So far, we’ve only touched 1-2pcs protos. We are happy carry anything available, but it looks like things are still a bit in the future. I’ll email Tom and see what the status of their project is.
Is it the same mini-breadboard that Tom Igoe uses… Digikey part 923273-ND – sure looks like that one. That’s $7.37 from them (unless you want to stock it and offer as an option - looks like a 3M part)
Nice you’ve done it this way with breadboard separate as it allows one to buy multiple cheap shields to keep with different hardware permanently attached for different projects
Sorry we didn’t list at same time. I was really paranoid about the cost of the smaller BB. That thing is really hard to find! We are having new ones made in China for a much lower price. Let us know if you have any other shield ideas.