Something that may be pretty obvious by now is the fact that I love Kickstarter, but the matter of fact is that I love any crowdsourcing project, it’s just that Kickstarter is the go-to platform for most people who want to get funding now days, thus it’s my first go-to place to check out some awesome indie projects. Not only is it a place to see what cool things people are doing, but it’s a place to help out others and possibly bag some beta products.

Ninja Blocks is one of those products that I fell in love with the moment I read the pitch, sure, I can’t think of a practical use for one right this second, but with APIs for social services becoming more and more popular and, in turn, becoming more integrated with our lives, it’s easy to imagine that one day I might hook up a Ninja Block as a monitor for my kids or something.

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For someone like me, being able to envision an idea is one thing, but having the know how and ability to act upon that idea is a whole different kettle of fish. Early last year I got into Arduino’s (an open source electronics prototyping platform) and developing little ‘things’ with them. If you are someone with a creative mind you could surely waste many hours – even days – playing and programming Arduino’s. At first it was little things, but as I dug deeper into the possibilities of the Arduino, more ideas would flood in. I then began looking at other platforms such as the .NET Gadgeteer and the PicoCricket and they are both great. Now I have discovered a new want. A whole new platform to learn and something that looks like it would be great for rapid prototyping. The Teagueduino.

The Teaguedino is a development board loaded with the Teensy++ USB Development board plugged right into their custom breadboard which supplies you with 5 inputs and 5 outputs. They also supply you with an array of knobs, buttons, servos, speakers and lights that will literally just snap onto the board. Along with this, The Teaguedino team give you a copy of their open source software which makes the whole learning part easier. It offers up what looks to be a nice GUI with fairly simple to use Drag and Drop features. The idea is to get as many people as possible, spanning all ages, into development for embedded electronics and as all the components just snap into place (No soldering required) this can guarantee adoption.

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Unique airframe design? Check. Open Source hardware? Check. Open Source software? Check. The ability to hover like a Helicopter, but at the flick of a switch, fly like an airplane? Double check.

It seems that the Quadshot has it all and it sure would be hard to find something as cool as this before those Christmas lists are finished. However, don’t fret, The Quadshot team have just raised a whopping $84,000 on Kickstarter (of a $25,000) goal, so these puppies are going into production and soon you should be able to buy either a complete plane or a kit to put together yourself and maybe tinker with some of the software.

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