It has been really great to see the response that the mbed Microcontroller form-factor has been getting. We spent a lot of time researching, testing and trialing prototypes to end up with what we have now, and it is good to know the effort was worthwhile. On our wall are all the different mbed prototypes, and it is funny to look at e.g. the one that is 2-eurocards big, and see how our thinking changed over time as we tried things out in the field. I'll perhaps write them up at some point...

But we do still sometimes get asked why mbed doesn't have a screen? Or a certain connector? Or a flavour-of-the-month peripheral chip? There are obviously lots of factors why we haven't gone that route, and here is a good example of one of those reasons.

Baseboards!

Check out this mbed-compatible baseboards that Embedded Artists have just announced:

• Embedded Artists Baseboard

Looking at the specs, it's got OLED screen, SPI SD card socket and Flash, I2C port expander, accelerometer and light sensor, joystick, push button and rotary switches, XBee, Ethernet and CAN sockets. Sounds like a great mix of peripherals.

We've used Embedded Artists stuff before and always been very pleased with the quality, so whilst we haven't got hold of one yet so can't fully comment, if you want to try it out yourself it looks like you can pre-order the Embedded Artists baseboard and get it some time in January.

Great job EA!

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