Teagueduino : Learn to make.

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.

The great thing is that once you have experimented with the board and grasped the basics – there is nothing stopping you from taking off the Teensy++ board, grabbing a soldering gun and getting down to some hardcore programming.

I can’t wait to see how the community behind The Teaguedino grows and if its anything like the Arduino community, it will be full of life for time to come. We need to get these into school classrooms as soon as possible and get kids programming ASAP and I think that within the educational system is a place where these great open source projects can grow.

Teaguedino has only recently raised funds on Kickstarter so the kits are not readily available yet, but keep an eye on their website for details on development. In the meantime, here is a video to whet your appetite on the possibilities.