Arduino has announced – and successfully crowdfunded – the upcoming production of a little brother of the Arduino boards, specialized in networking and sensors. The board is small, it measures only 1 inch by 2, but powerful.
This image, from the indiegogo crowdfunding page, shows two currently available Arduino boards and, at the left, the new addition: Pinoccio
Pinoccio’s strong points are its WIFI networking capability, a long battery life and an almost infinite expandability by little add-ons called shields. There are shields for
– accelerometer
– bluetooth
– environment (temp, humidity, light intensity)
– infrared channels
– midi
– security (infrared motion detector and mic)
– motion sensing
– solar charging
and more are coming…
The technical specs are here with a tranqulizing comment:
If you’re not a geek, and reading over this stuff freaks you out, have no fear! We’re building Pinoccio to be friendly and easy to use for beginners. In other words, you don’t really need to understand what all this stuff means.
For us who aren’t geeks, the tiny board has a CPU with built-in radio for connecting to each other, it’s got a USB rechargeable battery that lasts a long time, all kinds of connections to be put to creative use, it can connect to the web with a special add-on and it’s got a temperature sensor.
What’s the use of it all? Maybe this short video intro from the crowdfunding page will give you an idea of the almost unlimited possibilities.