You know what....
I've never designed a PCB in my life (except for surface mounted soldering onto perfboard using just flux and a soldering iron and sometimes maybe the heatgun if i mess up), eg no CAD experience (yet)
But, surface mounted NPN transistors give roughly up to 500ma of current right? (off the top of my head the 2222 smt) if you used a transistor on each pin to not light an LED, but to simply protect the atmega chip from drawing too much current (a 1k resistor from each pin)
*The transistor will protect the arduino pin from damage.
*Allow much greater current to be drawn from the USB.
(or with a protection diode)
*Drive relays directly from the Pin.
Anyway I'll be keeping an eye on the Magpie... I have a growing collection of Aussie boards now
