@uChip, thanks for your input on the mosfet, I’ll take a look at the 73871 as an alternative.
@jremington my experience with pololu has also been very positive, I love their orangutan series, and I am a big user of their ISP programmers (cheap, small, and customizable). That being said, in this case I can’t go with the ready-made solution, and one thing I don’t like about pololu is that they not always provide schematics for their products (but I understand that may be motivated by economical reasons to prevent cheap knock-offs on ebay).