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Seeed Grove: http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Gr...

Sparkfun Qwiic: https://www.sparkfun.com/qwiic

But it honestly looks a lot like Wemos shields, except as castellated PCBs. Which I think has potential for nice low-profile projects. Main problem is that we only need so many temperature sensors.

I think the real killer is how often they'll end up needing to add a microcontroller or something to force a component into an i2c mold.

1. Build your own. Check out RePhone from seeed. https://www.seeedstudio.com/Re...
2. Use a portable WiFi hotspot with Google Voice and an iPod Touch. I have a data plan with a Straight Talk device and use Google Voice for texts. I don't get many calls, and that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it.

https://wolfpaulus.com/journal... https://jasperproject.github.i... Neither use Google Voice, and all processimng stays inside the PI, you can also buy RELAY boards that plug into the PI to support home automation. http://www.seeedstudio.com/dep... example above, but there are many others.

May be components intended for a different use. Definitely not fit for longer-term usage or bad weather.

The PCB is rather low-density. This may be a custom-manufactured board (which may mean no way to track it) with the components placed and soldered by hand (iron and hot air). There may be some way of tracking the GSM module (the one marked 2209) as that is way outside of non-specialized shops to design and not a lot of manufacturers make them. May need to be opened for identification. The rest looks like some standard microcontroller and support circuitry, nothing special at all. Problem is that except for the GSM module, creating a simple mobile phone-like device is rather easy. These days you get GSM modules to be used by hobbyist microcontroller projects, for example this here: http://www.seeedstudio.com/dep...

Like what ? Typical modern microprocessors capable of running Linux aren't very breadboard friendly.

Really?

Well 8bit micros are easy to find in a DIP package. For everything else there's adapter boards which are dime a dozen on ebay.

Or if you shop around I'm sure you can find a 32bit Arm Cortex M0 in a DIP package.

The DSO Nano from Seeed Studio almost fits that bill. The specs aren't amazing, but at $89 with its own screen it's useful for education or light tasks. I keep one in my bag for emergency troubleshooting in the field.

They have a more capable version, too, for anyone who's interested.

The DSO Nano from Seeed Studio almost fits that bill. The specs aren't amazing, but at $89 with its own screen it's useful for education or light tasks. I keep one in my bag for emergency troubleshooting in the field.

They have a more capable version, too, for anyone who's interested.

The series of Seeed oscilloscopes are a bit clunky, but otherwise reasonable.

There's currently quite a bit of fun hackery going on with TPlink WR703n routers. See these: OpenWRT, LibraryBox, expansion hub, 3D printable case, external antenna md (PDF) or pre-modded for extra ram+flash. I'm currently trying to get HSMM-MESH going on one.

The cheapest available option on the Kickstarter is 75GBP, or about $120 USD.
Here's a bare 10.1" 1366x768 for $89
There's also a 7" 1280x800 display with enclosure, VGA input, etc. for $129 shipped, although it's currently out of stock
I don't see how this is really bringing anything new or cheaper to the table. If they could get this manufactured and sold for a retail price of $50, that would be much more interesting, IMO.

The cheapest available option on the Kickstarter is 75GBP, or about $120 USD.
Here's a bare 10.1" 1366x768 for $89
There's also a 7" 1280x800 display with enclosure, VGA input, etc. for $129 shipped, although it's currently out of stock
I don't see how this is really bringing anything new or cheaper to the table. If they could get this manufactured and sold for a retail price of $50, that would be much more interesting, IMO.

You should be able to use an arduino to do this.

Take something like this shield, and then connect the camera's SDCard socket to the arduino on 6 of the GPIO lines. (The shield uses the SPI interface.) Read/write speed may be a factor though, due to using serial bitbash mode to read and write to the card over SPI.

This would let you add encryption functionality to any SDcard capable device that doesn't currently support it. Putting a buffer lytic cap on, and a voltage regulator would let you tap the camera's SDCard slot's +3.5v DC line to power the arduino. (Arduino needs +5v, so you need the regulator and some load balancing capacitance if the ardino needs more than the port wants to give occasionally, such as durng heavy write cycles.)

A possibly faster option is to use one of the sexxier arduinos that has a USB interface on it, and attach an AES keyfob.

In both cases, the arduino tells the camera that it is an SDCard, and impersonates same, while doing things behind the scenes with permanent attached storage.

This would let the constructed device work with pretty much any commercial camera.

If your friend is running a successful business, then he's got a particularly useful and uncommon skill.

Some 80% of all first businesses fail, but only 20% of second businesses fail. That's because after the first business, you learn from your mistakes. Your friend has the skills and experience needed to start a new business - and that's what he should do.

So, what's trending on the map right now? What brick-and-mortar establishments are on the rise?

How about setting up a hackerspace? These seem to be popping up everywhere, and unlike McDonalds, there's still room for more.

While running the 'space, keep an eye out for things that might be products. With a hackerspace available it's easy to "test the waters" for a new tech product: you have access to people with skills for design, construction, [website] sales, and so on.

What they don't have is someone who can steer the ship, someone who has experience in things like incorporating, taxes, management, planning, accounting, and so on.

Consider starting a hackerspace. I hear that they can be successful and lots of fun.

Lets see.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Logic_Shrimp_logic_analyzer
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-pirate-v3-assembled-p-609.html?cPath=61_68
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-blaster-v2-jtag-debugger-p-807.html
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/preorder-open-workbench-logic-sniffer-p-612.html?cPath=75

And this is just from first link in my bookmarks.

Lets see.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Logic_Shrimp_logic_analyzer
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-pirate-v3-assembled-p-609.html?cPath=61_68
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-blaster-v2-jtag-debugger-p-807.html
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/preorder-open-workbench-logic-sniffer-p-612.html?cPath=75

And this is just from first link in my bookmarks.

Lets see.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Logic_Shrimp_logic_analyzer
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-pirate-v3-assembled-p-609.html?cPath=61_68
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/bus-blaster-v2-jtag-debugger-p-807.html
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/preorder-open-workbench-logic-sniffer-p-612.html?cPath=75

And this is just from first link in my bookmarks.

You can get 0.5W panels about the size of a smart phone for $2.00. considering they only have a ~5w/hr battery it should be possible to get an 80% charge in 10 hours.

Most places you only get about 6 hours of good solar power.. you also have to keep in mind that the conversion to charge isn't 100% efficient and the phone will be on.. even in standby drawing power. Now I have seen a 5 watt 12v panel that's about half the size of a sheet of paper that would work well.

You can get 0.5W panels about the size of a smart phone for $2.00. considering they only have a ~5w/hr battery it should be possible to get an 80% charge in 10 hours. The problem being that solar power drops significantly when not in direct sunlight, partially covered, through glass, not perpendicular... etc.

(Just as a side note: the electronics hobbyist community has gotten used to dealing with surface-mount parts.)

Also check out:

Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/ (Sells arduino and other microcontrollers, as well as "heathkit-like" solder-it-yourself electronics kits).

Dangerous Prototypes: http://dangerousprototypes.com/ (Among other things, they were involved with designing a naked-board, 16-channel w/12K sample depth, 100 megasample/sec digital logic analyzer -- for US$50. Then some guy took the firmware and added as many features that he could based upon an HP 16550a timing logic analyzer.)

Seeedstudio: http://www.seeedstudio.com/ (they're a store that sells cool hardware for arduino and others -- I think they're in China, though)

Digikey for all sorts of electronic parts: http://www.digikey.com/

Jameco Electronics for parts and electronic kits: http://www.jameco.com/

Seeed Studios makes Grove System, a connectorized bunch of input and output parts that plug in to an Arduino shield, and also sells Arduinos, Netduinos, Zigbee things, and *duino clones. Grove is $39 for the basic set of ~10 things (and has various extra frobs available.) (And realistically, you'll still want to get a breadboard and bag of assorted LEDs and some resistors.) They previously made a similar system called Electronic Brick, which is a 3-wire interface; Grove is 4-wire so it can support either I2C or analog.

Seeed Studio is by far the least expensive PCB manufacturer I've ever seen. As an electronics hobbyist, I recently built a USB phone tap, and used Seeed's Fusion PCB service for the prototype PCB's.

I only planned to make two devices, but the minimum order quantity is 10 units. Somehow, the price was still less than $25, after shipping. This doesn't seem to be a hobbyist charity, either - they're making money off it, even though it's a great deal.

The PCB's were perfect. No errors that I could find.

Order Seeed's Fusion PCB Service

USB Phone Tap

(Yes, there are 3 E's in Seeed)

If you want really cheap boards for prototype purposes, consider these sources:

Seeed Studio: these are a total of $10 to $45 for 10 boards, plus a small amount of shipping from China. I get my boards in 1-2 weeks.

DorkbotPDX: based in the US, but only sends out batches every few weeks. They charged based on raw square inches.

And for volume, pcbcart.com is really great. Probably over 10x cheaper than Advanced Circuits.

Of course it's so cheap since it's outsourced, but that's life. Advanced Circuits is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Their best price on a prototype run is $33 each, 4 minimum order, plus $30+ shipping. I'd only consider them if I had to get my boards within 5 days and was willing to pay for that.

Not affiliated, just a happy customer.

I looked at its specs. No way I'd buy that. With 10KS/s you can't even decode audio! The simplest audio files usually are 44kHz. It may be better to build one's own scope with an Arduino (which will get you more geek points), or buy a DSO Nano (with 1Msps 12Bits, and 8 times the sample storage). Minimum Voltage Range Accuracy of 37.5 mV also won't get you very far, specially if you try simple amplifier stuff (which very often can vary only a few millivolts or even only microvolts).

Check out Seeed Studio scopes. They sell JYE Tech scope for $54, DSO Nano for $89. Fine if you don't need high sample rate, they are limited to 5M samples/sec or 1M samples/sec respectively.

I've found for most of my Computer Engineering needs that a logic analyzer is much more useful than an oscilloscope. From the same people who brought us the magnificent "Bus Pirate" I present to you the "Open Workbench Logic Sniffer" I've never actually used it but it looks like a pretty sweet device.

BBB is much cheaper then the official arduino at any quantity if you don't need the USB after programming or shield compatibility. Same for the arduino pro, which is more expensive, but has shield compatibility and requires no assembly.

Seeeduino is slightly cheaper then the official version and has some cool hardware features missing from the original.

Your first one should probably still be the official arduino board, however. If you need a large quantity, you can save a bundle with the BBB or RBBB.

the HxC Floppy Drive Emulator (in SD and USB flavors) which works even on Amiga and accurately down to rendering old-school marvels such as playing music by drive noises.

Painstakingly hand-made in small numbers for now, if that's not a project to be spread from high-volume automated production lines by the likes of Seeed, then what is?

You might start with the very popular PIC. Although the architecture is a bit long in the tooth and is a poor target for C, there loads of example projects for it so it's easy to learn. There are also many high-level building blocks (Basic stamp etc) that can get you up and running quickly.

I would highly recommend the Arduino to beginners. It's a great target for C, and there's loads of example projects for it too. Seeed Studio has been a great resource for me, especially the store, and the forum. #arduino on Freenode is popular and very helpful too.

Wrong. To learn electronics you should start with the basic circuits with discrete components. Then you can move to ICs.
Then to microprocessors and finally to complete development boards. Only in this way you will get a feeling about
what is really going on.

Get "The Art of Electronics" to guide you.

You might start with the very popular PIC. Although the architecture is a bit long in the tooth and is a poor target for C, there loads of example projects for it so it's easy to learn. There are also many high-level building blocks (Basic stamp etc) that can get you up and running quickly.

I would highly recommend the Arduino to beginners. It's a great target for C, and there's loads of example projects for it too. Seeed Studio has been a great resource for me, especially the store, and the forum. #arduino on Freenode is popular and very helpful too.