AVR-Chat

Dears

I have been lurking on this forum for a while and I thought I'd let  
you know about this opensource
AVR platform I've worked on.

I teach in a design school, specifically interaction design, and my  
job is to teach designers how to
exploit electronics and microcontrollers to make working prototypes  
of the objects they design.
Most of the platforms are ment to be used by engineers and  
specifically open source tools require to
be real geeks.

this is why we created  Arduino http://arduino.berlios.de.

It's an open source IDE written in Java running on mac os x/ windows  
and linux (coming soon) where the
users programs with a language that looks like java. (it's actually C  
code without the difficult bits
that get compiled by avr-gcc and dowloaded via bootloader)

We also provide the design for an ATMega8 RS232 and USB board with  
bluetooth coming soon.

You can download the source, the apps and the design from the website  
or you can buy pre made usb boards
for 20EUR a piece or 180EUR 10 pieces from our manufacturer.

I believe it could be useful also for electronics beginners in  
general to get started with AVR and microcontrollers
without the pain of learning C/ makefiles etc etc

i would love to read what you think about the concept

massimo