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- HOTNESS UNHOT
LighTake has the Arduino Compatible UNO Rev3 Development Board for $15 with free shipping. Features 14 digital input/output pins, 6 analog inputs, and a 16 MHz crystal oscillator. A neat little gadget for roboticists and hobbyists.
$15
with coupon code: "retailmenot" get additional $0.76 off (not so much but who doesn't like?)
Would you think a 9 year old inventor to be would be able to do something interesting with this (with a lot of help from dad)?
Never mind. I got my answer.
$15.20 w/ free shipping is the normal price for this item over at dx.com: http://dx.com/p/arduino-uno-rev3-development-board-120464?item=5
Or if you'd like something better, get the Arduino compatible Mega 2560 for $17.99 w/ free shipping: http://dx.com/p/arduino-mega2560-atmega2560-16au-usb-board-118047?item=3
Personally, I much prefer the mega. It has extra I/O, extra dedicated ports(hardware interrupts, hardware serial ports, etc...) plus more memory built in. And, for less than $3 more, why not?
It should be noted that all of the boards talked about here, including the one posted by Ben, are recreations of the original design by Arduino. The design of this board is completely open source, so there are many recreations available out there, but take into consideration most of these boards are of general lower quality than that of Arduino's creation. Also buying from the original creators' product supports their wonderful community that seeks to help the hobbyist/prototyper with the information from their forums.
I honestly have not seen a difference in quality between these recreations and the official arduinos. I've used both, but mostly the recreations for a variety of projects, such as an autonomous motorized wheelchair, a micromouse autonomous robot, a number of small electronics projects, and even for recording sensor data at up to 96,000ft in a "space balloon". My friend finally killed one (an Arduino compatible Mega)by hooking up the power(battery, not 5v) and ground backwards. From what I've read, that will also kill an official Arduino. And, while the power regulator onboard was fried, the Mega still works just fine when running off 5v power(usb or directly into a power port). So, I'd have to say, I don't see the quality difference.
Now, supporting them is a fine goal, and a good reason to buy the official ones. However, they've gotten a bit crazy with their pricing. I mean, look at the official ethernet shield. They're charging $45 for it.
In fact, someone discovered that they could take a Raspberry Pi($35), connect it up to the arduino and use it to mimic the functionality of the ethernet shield for less money. There's something wrong when an add-on single-function circuit board costs more than an entire general purpose computer.
Now, if you do want an Ethernet shield but don't want to pay a ridiculously high price... http://dx.com/s/ethe