Unless I'm mistaken, your BBB uses an FTDI cable. You should ensure 'set RTS on close' is enabled.
The best tutorial is from Ladyada's Boarduino page (look for 'Arduino-compatibility' about half way down).

Copper finishing nails and a block of wood make an ideal test bed.
I find the easiest method is to place the PCB over the block of wood and drill _tiny_ holes through any vias/holes in the board and through the wood (use a drill press). From this I can usually bang copper nails in nice and straight.

How you wire the test bed is an exercise for the reader. Perhaps an Arduino pumping data into the board and also emulating an HD44780 comparing input to expected output?

You may have better luck than me, but I couldn't fit the MAX232 and associated bits into the footprint of even the much larger SS-Serial board. Even double sided the board still has a few vias.

If you can fit it onto a reasonably sized single sided board, I think we'd all love to hear, otherwise, I sell just the bare board for exactly this reason. If you'd like a starting point, the board/schematic are available at the end of the directions.

MaxSerial boards are now in stock.

Check out the directions, or just jump right to the WebStore and buy a kit.

After much deliberation, these will be silkscreened as "Freeduino MaxSerial".
I've noticed most people seem to regard the NKC Electronics boards as the unofficial official Freeduinos.

The version number should be V2.0 or superior, as the changes from V1.0 justifies the new version number

I think you're right, 2.x makes sense.

what PCB design software do you use to make those nice looking 3D images of the board

I use Eagle. The 3D mock-ups come from the Eagle3D ulp and POVRay. It can take some futzing to generate exactly what you're after, but it works. I find it most useful to uncheck "parts" in the Eagle3D dialogue and use it to generate PCB only renderings like these. I know there's a Protel/Altium tool to do the same.

I think I will also add the 3.3V regulator

I used a 78L33, simply because I have them in inventory. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a standard for 3.3V regulators, the 78L33 is only made by ST. Other manufacturers make other regulators, and you may find a better choice for you; I found most to be pricier and require larger stabilizing caps. A different regulator may have a low enough drop out to run from the 5V rail though instead of Vin.

After finalizing the BOM, these are just waiting to join a panel. (Now I need to do real work so I have something justifying a panel ) The only strange component left is the 3.3V regulator (78L33) and the short caps.

Expect boards whenever they come back from the fab-house, and kits whenever the parts come in.

Actually, is there anyone who'd prefer I didn't use "Freeduino Serial"? There could be confusion with the existing (transistor or otherwise) Freeduino Serial boards.

There can always be kits Back of the napkin says they'd run about $15-$20.

If anyones interested I can try to sneak a few onto next week's panel.

I've had a max232 based design sitting in the wings for a while (it's double sided though). Anyhow, relevant details are here.

Looks good, but:

• You likely only need 1uF for C4, although 10 won't hurt.
• You have a 470uF cap on the MPX5500 Vout. I assume that was cribbed from Figure-4 of the datasheet, in which case you need 470picofarad, not microfarad.

You can play with it later, but almost all MAX232-like chips will work with 0.1uF caps for the charge-pump and storage caps (C1, C2, C4, and C8 in your schematic), if the smaller caps mean a change from electrolytic to ceramic you may actually see better performance out of the MAX232 due to the much lower ESR. Really though, modern MAX232 chips are pretty resilient, as long as you get the caps in there, they'll usually work.

The reset part would be a very welcome feature...

Take a look at the MaxSerial schematic for an idea of how this could be implemented.

In the max232 section,
c4 should be between V- and ground, not V+ and ground.
If you've got the MAX232 sitting there anyway, you can use the spare receiver, the DTR line, and a 100nF cap to add diecimila style reset.

I honestly didn't know how much demand there'd be for a stickduino sheild. I didn't expect the "small USB stick sized" crowd and the "shield prototyping" crowd to overlap much.

A few quick ideas though:

• Cross talk shouldn't bee too much a concern at the speeds the Arduino switches at. Outputs are also usually driven against less than 10K of output impedance.
• The 3 VCC pins are only present on original stickduinos, recent stickduinos have "VCC, RESET, and GND" in the top left instead.
• With all the board space available, you could add a prototype area or a small boost converter.
• The Stickduino has 17 pins/side. Unfortunately, 17 pin female headers are basically non-existent. You might consider using two 16-pin headers and just ignoring the extra ground on the lower right and the extra VCC on the upper left.

Feel free to hit me up for some collaboration.

Both the RTS and DTR lines are asserted by the IDE to cause a reset. The DTR line is asserted (pulled low by the FT232) when opening the terminal by any application (unless you take great pains not to).
I honestly can't remember how or why RTS is set, but it is. I recall some trickery with Windows to set RTS on close.

The FTDI cables that are ever-present only provide the RTS line.

Depending on how much storage you need, you might try something like Atmel's serial flash they top out at about 8MB though.

You could also try cracking open your SD card, might reveal a solderable IC or atleast a part number to source. Although this makes it look like it may not be a monolithic IC but generic flash and some protocol glue.