Brazilian Devs Launch Tiny $1 STEM-Oriented Microcontroller Board On Indiegogo

DeviceGuru writes: A team of Brazilian developers has just launched an open-source microcontroller board called the "One Dollar Board," that's so simple and inexpensive that it can be distributed as standard teaching materials to kids in schools all over the world. The tiny board appears to contain a single 8-pin microcontroller chip, along with a handful of passive components, making it considerably more simple and affordable than the similar STEM-oriented and open-sourced BBC Micro:bit board. More details about the One Dollar Board are on its Indiegogo campaign page, where you can get one for a contribution of $1 (duh!), plus unspecified shipping and import duties.

"STEM-oriented" hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, is there any (computer) hardware which is *not* "STEM-oriented". WTF is that even supposed to mean? Is that a passive aggressive euphemism of "it's for nerds, duh"?

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[Opportunist]

My guess is that the idea is "making kids interested in STEM fields".

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

(insert Butters' "What, What - In the Butt" song here)

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[Opportunist]

Sorry, I don't fuck at the first date. At least you should invite me to dinner first.

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[iTrawl]

As opposed to "word processing, and spreadsheet"-oriented I suppose.

Re:"STEM-oriented" hardware

[Mr D from 63]

STEM = Sales Terminology for Electronics Marketers.

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[vel-ex-tech]

I was completely serious. Consider that the Christian religion and the Muslim religion are forks of Judaism. What have they given us?

- Ritual infant male genital mutilation
- Hatred of homosexuals, especially two-spirited assigned males
- Conflict between two "separate" faiths (christian vs. muslim both rooted in judaism)

This is unlike any other tradition on the face of the earth. Generally, humans tend to be accepting of two-spirited individuals.

I'm not advocating the murder of innocent individuals who pr

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, technically, homophobia is one of the inventions of the Abrahamic superstition...pardon, I mean "religion". ;-p

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[Applehu Akbar]

" WTF is that even supposed to mean?"

Obviously, a generally applicable single-board computer that is cheap enough to be used as a teaching aid for science-tech elementary students. Not for people like you.

Arduino?

[goombah99]

Since I can buy an arduino or ESP8266 for essentially the same price what is this getting me besides some new unsupported hardware?

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[TheRealMindChild]

You can buy an Arduino for $1?

Re: Arduino?

[afidel]

Not really, but there are a ton of Uno clones in the $3-4 range with free shipping which is effectively the same price range.

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[goombah99]

$1.75 with free shipping and pin headers is effectively less than $1.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Pr... [ebay.com]?

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[Xenna]

You can buy this ESP8266 instead for $2, it has wifi and more memory:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PCS-E... [ebay.com]

Ipad

[raymorris]

> Well, is there any (computer) hardware which is *not* "STEM-oriented".

The best-known computer hardware in the world isn't science, engineering, or math oriented, it's consumption and marketing oriented. I suppose it's "technology" in a sense.

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[Opportunist]

So call it open spec hardware. Can we get back on topic now?

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[lhowaf]

I guess the answer is "no."

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[Hognoxious]

No it doesn't. It means that between the engineer and customer, marketing got involved.

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[gnupun]

Hardware doesn't have source code.

Wrong, analog hardware may not have source code, but digital hardware like microcontrollers and CPUs are written in hardware programming languages like Verilog (syntax similar to C) and VHDL (syntax similar to Ada).

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[religionofpeas]

Yes, a synthesiser takes your description of the logic in source code and synthesises the digital logic. FTFY.

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[gnupun]

Technically, these languages are called hardware description languages (HDLs), mister turd brain. But they have a similar model to compiled software programming languages where you write the source code and feed it to a compiler which then figures out what digital logic elements are needed and how to connect them. So, very similar to compiling your C program (verilog code) into machine code *.exe (net list: consisting of primitive digital logic like AND, OR, XOR gates and flip-flops and how they're connecte

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[religionofpeas]

Well, this particular hardware doesn't come with source code.

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[alvieboy]

Although you have a point on RTL, much more is needed to deliver a RTL design to chip level. And most of those designs are also fab-dependant - a 24nm bulk to be manufactured at let's say TSMC is different from a 24nm bulk at Samsung.

There is not much difference between analog and digital here. Unless your plan is to use an FPGA for the digital part - but even there, your luck may vary depending on the FPGA manufacturer and tools.

Alvie

Sub-Dollar Boards Already Available

[lobiusmoop]

Read about this on CNX [cnx-software.com]. A commenter pointed out that there are already lots of Arduino compatible boards available on Ebay. [ebay.com]

Why not just buy arduino clones??

[Racemaniac]

The pro mini's are about 1.25$ atm, arduini nanos with usb port are 1.75$, and the cheapest stm32 boards (which also have arduino ported to them) are about 2$ (and far more powerful than an arduino nano).

What the hell is this project possibly thinking of being able to add to that (except for high shipping costs, since i doubt that unlike the chinese prices i quoted above, i doubt theirs will include shipping).

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[Mr D from 63]

None of those are Brazilian.

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[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

NASA rockets, Russian rockets... all made in Taiwan.

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[rmdingler]

None of those are Brazilian.

That's right.

Brazil is en fuego (em chamas) lately; with the sporting event of the quadrennial, the impeachment of the year, and the wax of the decade.

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[flyingfsck]

I don't know what a Brazilian wax has to do with STEM, unless you want the teacher...

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[hughbar]

Yes, as a Brit I have a big problem with the Micro:bit too. These things run out of road very quickly and are a path to fragmentation and divided attention. I just finished a year of volunteering in a primary school in London, 60 minutes each week of which 10 getting clunky laptops to boot etc. etc. It would be much more sensible to concentrate on Arduino + clones and Raspberry Pi + clones, especially as the community is good for both. Bottom line, I'm somewhat 'against' hardware that is STEM-only, much bet

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[serviscope_minor]

Bottom line, I'm somewhat 'against' hardware that is STEM-only, much better to use real-life hardware with STEM lessons and projects.

Almost all hardware is STEM hardware. The consumer-facing stuff is a tiny fraction of it.

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[hughbar]

Yes, agree. My point was phrased badly, I'm against community-less hardware that is built 'specifically for education'. Given (your point) that there's so much 'good' hardware, it's pointless. Another point against Micro:bit here, both Google and Microsoft are pushing programming environments for it. I wonder why they would do that?

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[Slugster]

Yea,,,, I hate to rag on people trying to be nice, but this thing doesn't seem to have any advantage over a lot of already-available options.

If we can dream, here is what I would propose:
1. A roughly-credit-card sized board powered by 3v, so they can just hook up a couple 1.5v cells (maybe attach the board to a plastic battery holder--they don't cost much).
2. some capacitive button sensors right on the PCB, so some human-interface input is already present (at least 8 - 10 buttons),
3. an SMD LED next t

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[serviscope_minor]

Having a USB connection on there is nice but a lot of people in the world can't afford a PC. A lot of schools in the world can't afford a PC. Most places you can get phones now tho, and there is Android phones that only cost $25. You are way more likely to see a cell phone in the 3rd world that you are to see PCs.

You could easily use a Raspberry Pi as the "PC" to program these things. It's even pretty overpowered for that task. The CLK/DATA idea is interesting, but would be horrendously slow.

Re: Why not just buy arduino clones??

[afidel]

Yeah but an RPI+display is WAY more than a cheap phone. It would be better to find the cheapest phone that supports USB OTG and use that as the programmer.

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[serviscope_minor]

Yeah but an RPI+display is WAY more than a cheap phone. It would be better to find the cheapest phone that supports USB OTG and use that as the programmer.

True. I don't know what the cheapest USB OTG phone is, but it's likely cheaper than RPi plus case, screen, PSU, screen, cable and mouse. Nonetheless, it'd be cheaper buying an RPi plus bits than a x86 PC by a fair margin, I expect. And a somewhat nicer experience than using a really cheap phone. Those things tend to be really horrible.

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[Anonymous Coward]

And to answer my own question as I just got around to parsing through the actual campaign, the code is apparently to grant access to content(?) and acts as a tracking system to show where the boards are being used globally. The first part is kinda nebulous but a visual representation of where they are being deployed is kinda cool :)

buy one get one free

[Anonymous Coward]

now with a free zika virus sample in orders of one or more!

That's a lot of developers

[JeffOwl]

/I'm sorry

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[Anomalyst]

BRAZINGA!

Cool - a new Business Card :)

[MindPrison]

I'd have a bunch of those and use them as give-away business cards / presentation USB / Car windows ICE scraper.

Too minimal to be useful

[m.alessandrini]

These boards are so minimal, you could as well buy a microcontroller with a not too miniaturized package and solder some wires on it.

Not as cool as an ESP8266 board

[RobinH]

You can now get some models of the ESP8266 board for under $2, and it's both Arduino compatible and it has Wi-Fi. It's rather incredible, actually.

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[MindPrison]

Pardon me my paranoia...

I use those ESP8266 (12E) myself, but I've really come to question the low price level of these. They are crazy awesome for what you get, 4Mbit flash ram, WiFi Chip (with encryption to sport!) and a 32 bit microcontroller you can code with whatever you toss at it...

But if we stop and think about it - the WiFi chip itself could harbour some malicious code to "phone home" some information about our networks...now ...imagine these deployed in every experimenters bedroom anywhere...a

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[RobinH]

Well, if I was going to go down that road (and I'm not, as yet) then I'd assume they're not trying to infiltrate "every experimenters bedroom." It's much more likely they want to use these as backdoors into corporate networks.

It's about time!

[Mr.CRC]

It used to be, only Liberal Arts majors, artists, poets, sculptors, athletes, trades people, businessmen, and musicians could get their hands on, or knew anything about microcontrollers.

Already exists

[gweihir]

First, the $1 is misdirection: You still need a real computer to do anything with this. Second, ATTINY85-based boards with similar connectivity are about $1.50 for a single on Ebay including shipping from China. Search for "Digispark" (which was a Kickstarter project that produced CC-BY-SA 3.0 open software and hardware and got $300'000 for the $5000 asked). And the Digispark works with the Arduino IDE. I have a few.

Bottom line: These people are years late to the game and there is absolutely nothing revolu