Diavolino

Say hell-o to Diavolino. Yes, it's yet-another Arduino compatible board, but it's cheap and kind of neat. Simplified design, rounded corners, and shiny. Open source kit. You can get one at our store here.

We designed this primarily in response to local need in our San Francisco hacker community for low-cost boards for teaching.

In many ways, this project is reminiscent of and complimentary to our ATmegaXX8 target boards, which are low-cost, simple design circuit boards for programming AVR microcontrollers through an ISP connection. And while you can add one, those boards don't have a place to put a USB-TTL cable. And so here we are.

The design is like what you'd get if you bred the Ardweeny from Solarbotics with the 5 V Arduino Pro from SparkFun. It's designed as an open source, through-hole soldering kit, with the "Duemilanove" form factor.

It has a low-profile design-- at least as far as through-hole goes. The tallest component is the 3 mm LED, and there are smaller ones out there if that's a problem. As with many other boards of this type, it uses the "bare bones" method, removing the FTDI USB chip from the board in favor of using a USB-TTL cable.

And it is *really* bare bones-- more bare bones than a Bare Bones Board, to be precise. It has a reset button, the LED, auto-reset parts, decoupling caps, (etc.), plus wire jumper locations for optional power by USB-TTL connector and regulator bypass, and a crystal oscillator, but no regulators by default.

And... it has flames.

But, here's what you won't find on Diavolino:

• The USB interface chip-- again, that's why you need the cable.
• Advanced power management. Please provide power to Diavolino from one source at a time: battery, USB, or plug-in power supply.
• A separate 3.3 V regulator. Shields and accessories that require separate 3.3 V power may need assistance to work correctly.

Additionally, it's worth noting that the 6-pin ICSP programming header is not positioned to correctly fit "hermaphrodite" shields that have both male and female headers on the bottom. (It can be wired up, of course.)

The board has strain-relief holes (Dale Wheat's trick) for battery wires, and lends itself well to this configuration: The board plus a 3xAA battery box and a strip of double-sided foam tape. Pretty darned portable.

With a bunch of optional components added-- side sockets, power jack, little regulator -- it starts to look a little more recognizable.

The circuitry was designed in gEDA, and we've released the PCB design files as a "reference design" that peels back the artwork so that you can actually see the connections and the component labels-- it makes a much better complement to the schematic, and you can download the files from the documentation links below.

The Diavolino is available at the Evil Mad Science shop.

Documentation links:
• Download schematics here
• quick start card
• Detailed instructions (10 MB PDF) -- Just posted 6/29.
• PCB design (ZIP archive, for use with gEDA)
• Need additional help? You can ask questions in the Diavolino Support Forum