This was just sent to me by member TimJ:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/663438947/mini-duino?ref=discovery
$10,000 for a 1284 board project! Clearly I am in the wrong business 
I designed, bought parts, assembled and made available in about a months time a Repairable(!) 1284 system on a board - and it certainly didn't take $10K!
kickstarter - what a crock!
Indeed...
$17 - A Single - Get a Mini Duino+.
$17 - Teensy 3.1 - Made in the USA, Purple OSH Park Edition
While I certainly do like the '1284, for $17 I'll go with the 72 MHz ARM processor.
I am pretty sure someone already does a mini version of the 2560 but I can't seem to track it down now.
Edit.
Found it... Well sort of
http://jkdevices.com/arduino-megamini
Except their website is not working and I'm not sure if they are actually still in business.
The Eagle files are still on GitHub
Anyone want to start a KickStarter project 
CrossRoads:
I designed, bought parts, assembled and made available in about a months time a Repairable(!) 1284 system on a board - and it certainly didn't take $10K!
Here's the question: How closely do your pinout and the other fellow's correspond?
{How much are you selling them for?}
I'd be more comfortable with his competency if he could spell "MHz" correctly.
Pinout - mine is the DIP package pinout, 1 to 1. I didn't look to see what his is.
My price is posted with the pics on my website
Modeled after the Solarbotics Ardweeny, but adapted to have the 1284P on wirewrap socket headers instead of sitting under a board and having to solder all the legs to something. Killed your chip? Pop in a new one!
Header for offboard FTDI Module (can be right angle or vertical), "L" LED at the edge of the board. Cuttable traces for Vcc from FTDI, DTR from FTDI, and for the L LED if you don't want a light.
$21.25 plus $5.25 USPS shipping to US addresses; international shipping is usually more.
$7.50 extra for an FTDI module - the one I use has a micro USB connector.
paypal to cardinalflyer at comcast dot net.
Pretty much cost of parts plus couple bucks for the SMD assembly. Was quicker to just put the parts on than trying to find a nice neat way to kit them up.
I suppose if I wanted to go nuts and do a couple hundred up front the material price would come down some.
The other thing with the teensy uC is that it is a 3.3V part that can accept 5V signals. It's output is VDD - 0.5V, so for 3.3V thats 2.8V for a high output, 9mA source current and 2mA sink current when VDD = 3.3V per table 5.2.3 of MK20DX256VLY7 datasheet. And 100mA current limit for the chip.
So a good fast processor for some things, yet needs IO help for other things.
As with anything, the uC choice is just one of the tradeoffs in a project.
He'll probably make his $ 10,000 goal (and then some).
Kickstarter is a very nice initiative, but it's long been so hyped up that anybody can "earn" some dough the easy way.
Lots of suckers that don't look much further if they find something like this over there.
He'll sell his 600 units within days, to people that have no idea what they'll actually get.
It will kill Kickstarter in the end, if they don't put a halt to "projects" like these.
I don't know how the 2560 breakout board made it into the thread earlier; I have 2560 Mega breakout boards ready - need to get one assembled.
Need to order crystals ...
The 1284P board I designed is pretty simple, but it fits my needs. Didn't consider it a breakthrough or anything, so I published it on GitHub just in case someone else could use it. So putting a Kickstarter campaign together didn't occur to me but would definitely have taken several times the effort that went into designing the board itself.
Should be interesting to see what this guy uses for a core.
Also, to "install" the board in the Arduino IDE you will just need to copy and paste a folder I will provide in the hardware directory of your Arduino IDE's install location.
I will definitely make a good guide on using the Mini Duino+ after the campaign is successful.
Like to see how much time he has for that after starting college any day now
Kevin is an 18 year old out of small town Wisconsin where he has just graduated from High School. He has always been interested in electronics and in the past few years he has expanded that interest into a hobby. Although he is young, he is very motivated and creative. He is completely self taught through tinkering, books, websites, and videos. He actually had to wait to turn 18 in December to launch his first project, as he wanted it to be completely his own as he was the only creator.
Kevin will be going to college at UW-Madison next fall to study Electrical Engineer (to no surprise). He believes with the right education and connections he can make a difference. Kevin is also an Eagle Scout. When he's not playing around with electronics, Kevin enjoys skiing, soccer, video games, and playing the drumset.
My interests are similar - electronics, fencing, drums. Oh yeah, and that full time job. Barely leaves any time to get a round of golf in.
You can't possibly be old enough to play golf 
+1 XD
Oh yeah - I can slice a ball way off to the right with the best of them!
a little defense about the $10k kickstart
without actually researching it, if I had a $10k kickstart for a project, here's what I'd do:
a) FCC testing and CE cert (almost the entire amount!)
b) limited production run (that's the rest of it)
$10k is a PITTANCE for a serious project. You can spend $5k just getting FCC, if you don't have to re-test it. Equipment rental can cost you $1k easy to do pre-testing. It's not cheap. In fact, I'd say that FCC and CE testing is PROBABLY the single biggest hurdle to getting any kind of 'small entrepreneur' projects into production. And I priced FCC testing at around $5k last year. I have heard as low as $1k. I'd like to know what lab that is...
Designing is easy. Building is easy. getting some company to build boards for you is easy, relatively cheap.
COMPLYING WITH GUMMINT REGULATIONS: that is HARD. CE and FCC are required to sell your products in the affected zones. No exceptions, HUMONGOUS fines if you don't have the certification ($million per day, it's happened), and it can easily turn your pet project into a legal nightmare if you do not do it.
check this out: The FCC and Open Source Hardware - SparkFun Electronics
now you understand, right? That $10k will disappear, and you still have to fulfill the 'prize' requirements for successful kickstart.
I can't see Fcc/ce on a subcomponent - add one wire to an output pin and your emissions go right out the window.
