For most of my life I've wanted to do some fun stuff with computer hardware, especially robotics and UAV sorts of things. This is where fun software and down-to-earth applications come together. Finally I've been able to do something about it!

I knew I wanted to learn about embedded hardware platform, so I ordered up an Arduino board kit (USD $24 at the time). It was a good deal and didn't feel like a huge risk. The USB interface software was ready to go and has been easy to use.

I assembled the board in a couple of hours and was writing code - to make LEDs flash and piezos buzz - without much effort. An also to use a piezo as an input as a MIDI device - via the Ardumo project code. The kids were able to bang around whatever I attached it to and have it play in Garage Band.

What other interesting systems were sitting around waiting for interfacing? GPS receiver of course.

With a simple serial cable for my etrex unit, it was simple to hook up a couple wires and have the Arduino board reading the NMEA from the unit. I used this GPS parsing code.

More recently I also picked up a Wii Nunchuk - not that I have a Wii console - so I could output its accelerometer readings into the board. It was a simple interface to make, thanks to related code that is also publicly available. This video was very inspiring.

Next up, I've ordered a digital compass chip as well as some servos and will get a simple GPS chip eventually. But I really want for Christmas (that's probably how long it will take before I get back to it) is this GPS + GPRS module! In the end, for ~$200 you could have an embedded solution that reads GPS and sends a stream through GPRS.

Those of you who have patiently listened to my Augmented Reality ravings will understand where this is going. No, I haven't looked at head mounted displays lately - I'll just be happy if I can get my prototype working as a simple joystick input device. At this point all I can do is send back data through a serial connection, but am now working on getting it to identify itself as a USB input device... Then I'll get going with the fun part: OSSIMPlanet camera control :)

It's been a real fun journey so far and I recommend this Arduino platform to others interested in prototyping simple microcontroller projects.