Since I posted this in another thread I figured I should share this here as well. Late last year I developed a derivative of the Arduino Deumalinove called the "ZArdino".
It was designed primarily for South African's where the hobbyist has always had a hard time finding exotic components and very few people can solder SMD or have had experience with SMD. The primary aim was to use standard sized components which are easily available from most electronics suppliers. If it can be built in South Africa then it can surely be built just as easily anywhere else in the world.
Schematics etc to follow as soon as I have time to find the right ones.
@cr0sh thanks. Right now I don't have the time to build lots of these for people but I plan to make the PCBs available once I get enough people who want. The more I have made the cheaper it gets. I'll post when I do a production run of PCB's because at the moment I making a few at a time for people who are interested.
@BenF & TchnclFl unfortunately I cannot avoid the SMD FT232RL I heard something about a dip version available but I don't see any info on FTDI's website, so for now it has to be surface mount.
What I have done is provide the board with the FT232RL already soldered in place then the rest is easy through hole.
Otherwise its easy to solder the FT232RL with no skills, all you do is blob a lot of solder over all the pins and then wick it up with solder braid. Sure I'll flack for saying you can do it like that but for a hobbyist it works fine. The one in the picture was done like that and works fine, obviously the solder joints may come loose, but for a hobbyist its fine.
For the rest of the board using normal resistors, capacitors, LED's etc are a breeze compared to SMD ones.
In addition I have added a few features such as a power selection switch to choose from external or internal as well as using extra connectors that align to the standard vero board/bread board grid so you can easily make shields from Veroboard/Stripboard instead of having to drill extra holes in the Veroboard.
@leppie thanks for the message. I must actually check up on the blog been rather busy and my ADSL been "capped" lol only we know what that means.
I also managed to get from RS when I saw that they were doing Arduino. It took about 2 weeks to get. The Atmega328 is pretty hard to get otherwise and for just over R40 including the bootloader its a bargain.
In the UK they are 5GPB + tax (VAT) for one with bootloader, or 3.50 for ones without (although they are out of stock of the latter).
That would be about 56/40R.
(I bought and built a programmer kit, so I can buy from anywhere).
Farnell are more expensive, which explains why they have higher stock levels...
As long as you don't hold the soldering iron down continuosly it should be fine. I have soldered quit a few SMDs this way and the only problems I have had are some bad joints.
@leppie RS's prices have jumped up quite a bit since they first stocked the Arduino.
