>> MICROVIEW - COOL ARDUINO THAT JUST HIT A SNAG

Even with a great product and tedious planning - this is reality that not everything is perfect.

A few months ago a kickstarter.com project was launched and successfully backed with the idea of bringing the Arduino platform to the masses without having to tier with a computer, mobile device or add third party displays to interact with it. While successful in funding - the team ran into a snag with a number of units shipped missing boot-loader software.

First things first - the device looks great!

It is an Arduino compatible platform using an Atmega328P micro-controller (same as used in the Arduino UNO) but has been shrunk down in size offering a number of GPIO pins (analog, digital and PWM) but also incorporates an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode Display).

In addition to offering a simple library to interact with the OLED component they also offer a comprehensive set of tutorials that are very simple to follow and get your first experiences with the Arduino platform - it is a great kit for teaching students about IoT.

However the project just hit a snag - 2000+ faulty units were shipped.

• We are still trying to establish how much units are affected. The worst case scenario is 1,934 units need to be replaced outright. If you are part of the defective batch you will receive two units: one that has a broken bootloader (now and in the coming days) and one that works (by the beginning of November).
  source: kickstarter project update #15

The glitch was due to a change in testing procedures during manufacture and is set to cost the team approximately $58,000 USD to manufacture and send out replacement units to early backers. It is a hard lesson to learn but I commend the team for doing what is right.

It would be great to see a unit with built in networking capabilities (such as WiFi, BLE).