The Breaduino is an Arduino clone you assemble on a breadboard.
You get the experience of constructing your Arduino, instead of simply
assembling it. This gets you much closer to the device, letting you
better understand the platform. As a benefit, it's also a lot cheaper
than a full board-bearing kit. It's simple enough that you can easily
move it from solderless breadboards to solder-down protoboards for
Schematics, instructions, and video online
Students/Instructors: the kit includes a schematic, so you
can walk through how it's actually working. It's a great chance to
learn about what goes into running the Atmega328 at the heart of the
Arduino, as well as how you interface things to a
microcontroller. It's also a good chance to learn about voltage
regulation, pin-outs, pull-up resistors, and crystal oscillators.
It's totally solder-free, so it's safe for any age group or classroom
setup. You can even run it off 9V batteries, so expensive bench
supplies aren't needed (batteries and clips not included in the
Perfect for low-cost permanent installations
Artists: beyond learning about how the Arduino's guts work,
this thing is pretty darned cheap. It's perfect for installing in
finished pieces, costing $15 instead of $30 for a Duemilanove. This
lets you keep your current Arduino for further prototyping. Even if
the cost isn't a convincing argument, this puts you a few steps closer
to mastering the Arduino platform, which will let you do things you
An ideal tinkering platform
Hobbyists: are you interested in tinkering with Arduino, but don't want to spend $30 to get into it, this is a great introduction. Have you been building a bunch of Arduino-based projects with only one Arduino board? This gives you an inexpensive drop-in replacement, so you can run your homebrew Arduino-controlled Halloween lights and that Arduino barbot you built, simultaneously. And, for the BasicStamp, PIC, and other microcontroller folks, this is a great opportunity to bootstrap an AVR/Atmel environment. Add one of AdaFruit's excellent USBTinyISPs, and you have a complete Atmel development environment, adding another platform to your repetoire.
Curious about the details? Here's all the resources that are available online at this time:
Also: this kit doesn't include a programming cable! To put new Arduino software on, you'll need an FTDI cable of some sort; Adafruit has one for $20: FTDI cable at Adafruit. You should also look over the required supplies list before ordering.
I want to extend a huge thank-you to the folks at ITP, who put up Setting up an Arduino on a breadboard. It served as a guiding post for this kit. Many little things are different, but the core idea is the same. When I went looking for anyone who'd done an all-breadboard Arduino, ITP's page was the first thing I found. I had a slightly different set of component values in mind when I started this project, but, having seen how great their instructions where, I changed over to theirs.
Also, many thanks to Most Productions for helping with video production. I'm really happy with the video tutorial, and look forward to even better ones for future kits.
Sorry, this item is no longer stocked. Please email email@example.com to enquire about current availability.