Interesting idea on kickstarter. Arduino inside a breadboard.

[george graves]

Looks like someone took a breadboard, milled out the center section, added an arduino compatible board under the breadboard.  Nice and compact!



(warning - this video's production value might annoy you...) - but I really liked the idea.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzcore/bizzybee-breadboard-with-built-in-arduino

[8086]

Just an excuse for someone to do a kickstarter project.

Not a great product.

Never mind.

[ThievingSix]

I thought it was a rather poor sales pitch. They didn't really showcase their product effectively, all the images were too small, and when i clicked a link to their website, i was greeted with a login prompt(without even being able to see the website).

Honestly protoshields for the arduino are far better in my opinion, and their product looks rather clumsy and clunky, especially with the outrigger shield attachment. Not well thought out enough in my opinion, and certainly nothing new or original there.

[johnboxall]

I gave up on the video after two minutes. Too many buzzwords and 'leveraging...'. I'm generally supportive of Arduino stuff but IMO this is a solution looking for a problem. Haven't they heard of Google? There's already a metric crapload of boards out there which are tiny and breadboard friendly, and their LION2 beta sounds like a Freetronics LeoStick - http://www.freetronics.com/products/leostick which can sit nicely in a breadboard.

Their website still needs a login. Oh well, good luck to them.

[george graves]

I still think it's a good idea.  It saves a ton of breadboard space.  (I know there are some people that are a bit envious of funds being raised on kickstarter - blah blah blah...oh well)

Looking at the pic more closely, it seems as if they aren't milling out the breadboard, but rather drilling holes to pass a long pin header into it.  If the header was flush with the other sockets in the breadboard I think it would be a nice little space saving hack.

[boz@bzcore.com]

(warning - this video's production value might annoy you...) - but I really liked the idea.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzcore/bizzybee-breadboard-with-built-in-arduino

Yeah I really hate the video production too and I did it, it was a last minute replacement due to the fact that we were the first people to hit the new kickstarter "Hardware rule" gauntlet. In fact all of the image work and video was done ( or actually redone ) in desperate moments when they overruled our higher production video, image work and renders. We literally had to send it back to the stone age, as we worked back and forth with them over several days, to the extent that we had to add poor quality in order to pass. Our second set of photos was deemed to be renders also, even though they were actual photos, so we actually had to introduce flaws to get them to accept them and let us launch.

We did replace that long video with a much shorter clearer demonstration video fairly quickly, the long one was just trying to capture too much information that was lost from not being able to show the original short video images, and ended up just being word soup. Maybe you could take another look at the project,  if you would like I think the new shorter video gives a clearer picture of what we were trying to accomplish.

BOZ

[boz@bzcore.com]

I thought it was a rather poor sales pitch. They didn't really showcase their product effectively, all the images were too small, and when i clicked a link to their website, i was greeted with a login prompt(without even being able to see the website).

You are absolutely correct about our video, it was a last minute replacement out of desperation when months of higher quality work went poof under the new kickstarter hardware rules, there is a bit more explanation in my previous post in this thread here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-chat/interesting-idea-on-kickstarter-arduino-inside-a-breadboard/msg157196/#msg157196 That is also why we replaced the video fairly quickly with a shorter video more demonstrative of the product itself, perhaps you could give it a second look, But I would completely understand if you just weren't interested.

As to the bzcore site problem we did experience an outage do to higher traffic and it turned out that our cache was causing some to get the login in prompt, but it was eventually tracked down and fixed, again great if you would like to stop by and visit and again understood if not interested.

BOZ

[jucole]

It's an ok idea I guess but not for me!  what happens when you accidentally frag the chip ?

[boz@bzcore.com]

I gave up on the video after two minutes. Too many buzzwords and 'leveraging...'. I'm generally supportive of Arduino stuff but IMO this is a solution looking for a problem. Haven't they heard of Google? There's already a metric crapload of boards out there which are tiny and breadboard friendly, and their LION2 beta sounds like a Freetronics LeoStick - http://www.freetronics.com/products/leostick which can sit nicely in a breadboard.

Their website still needs a login. Oh well, good luck to them.

I didn't even last two minutes into it and I was in the thing, it was word soup, but those are bad decisions you sometimes make when a monkey wrench gets thrown into the best laid plans of mice and men. live and learn. See https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-chat/interesting-idea-on-kickstarter-arduino-inside-a-breadboard/msg157196/#msg157196 for a further explanation.

Yes there are a ton of boards out there but this one does fill a bridge and niche problem, while it is not the only solution for Arduino power users, it still can grow into a power users box of tricks. The main goal was to begin to design a teaching unit to expand the ability of schools  to bring electronics to STEM students at an 8 to 9 year old age level, but maintain all of the power of the original combination as someone grows into it, expanding modularly and Im not ashamed to say I believe my wife and I succeeded at that, and it has been demonstrated for us again and again in using these units with kids in school and scout programs, including our recent HackerScouts involvement.

Is it the right tool for everyone, Nope, is it the right tool for many Yep, your mileage may vary, but it certainly wasn't a solution looking for a problem or just a quick way for us to raise money on kickstarter.

Our goals really are to Teach Tech Today, and that is obviously something you and I have in common, thats not just a catch phrase or part of my "leveraging" or buzzword word soup(which I wasn't very proud of) for me, and the BZB has helped us do exactly that, teach, and we hope can help others.

As to the LION2 beta it is based on the the Leonardo, the same as Jonathan Oxer's LeoStick is.

I have spoken to him in the past and it is the first protoboard, that he gave me,  that turned into the center inline aduino or http://www.musheen.com/projects/cinr-breadboard CINR, that is the ancestor of both the BZB and the LION2 and it is no secret he has influenced me.

Open Source hardware by its very nature is a derivative medium, and that is a discussion I had with Massimo Banzi of the Arduino team himself, when we were discussing the BZB together at the Hardware Innovation Workshop at PARC last spring, so yeah I know a little about the crapload of boards, and yes even come under the the influence ideas of people in the community, like yourself whom I have followed and am a long time reader of your blog, so I do "get it".

All in all the Kickstarter has been rough for a number of reasons both with in my control and out, and ultimately is not the best representation of the great tool that the BZB is or BZCORE the fledgling ed tech startup that my wife and I recently founded, but they are growing pains for both, we live and learn from this experience. In the future we hope to bring our best foot forward in many ways, including completion and fulfillment of of this project, time will tell.

Thank you for the feedback John, while it is never easy to hear criticism, especially bad or even deserved, it is invaluable to fixing any mistakes we make and to learn not to make them in the future, so your help in that is immeasurable.

In the mean time if you are reading this and haven't already seen or made up your mind about the BZB bread board with built in Arduino please be sure to stop by the kickstarter at http://kck.st/WbiSck

BOZ

[boz@bzcore.com]

I still think it's a good idea.  It saves a ton of breadboard space.  (I know there are some people that are a bit envious of funds being raised on kickstarter - blah blah blah...oh well)

Looking at the pic more closely, it seems as if they aren't milling out the breadboard, but rather drilling holes to pass a long pin header into it.  If the header was flush with the other sockets in the breadboard I think it would be a nice little space saving hack.

You are correct that the protoype in the image work was drilled. It  does save a ton of space over a standard insertable such as the ardweeny, which takes up nearly a third of the breadboard whether you use the pins or not, once it is inserted. With the Center Inline Pinout you only use the space of the circuit itself, it also saves on the ratnest effect of wires crisscrossing all over the place. 

For example here is a circuit on and Arduino versus on the BZB Breadboard.

Same exact circuit, much cleaner,  a lot less wires and no ratsnest, 15 wires versus 2 on the BZB.

The header is slightly raised to accommodate the BZB Overlay Curriculum cards. When you lay the card over the board the center inline header acts as an anchor and then you place the components in their respective positions, by image and instruction, through the card into the breadboard holes to complete the circuit.

We were only able to demonstrate the hardware side of this equation due to the new kickstarter rules, we were not allowed to show how something would work in the future, but only how it existed at that moment, we werent allowed to use any form of mockup for demonstration purposes, so that is one of the casualties that was left behind in the mad scramble to salvage this launch under the new rules. The curriculum cards will however be available at the close of the Kickstarter in January. 

[boz@bzcore.com]

It's an ok idea I guess but not for me!  what happens when you accidentally frag the chip ?

Not the perfect fit for everyone, but we hope it is useful to some.

As to your fragging the chip question, it is a standard socketed UNO chip, so you would just grab a replacement chip, flip the BZB over, pop out the bad chip, put the new one in and you would be good to go, good as new.

[PA0PBZ]

Same exact circuit, much cleaner,  a lot less wires and no ratsnest, 15 wires versus 2 on the BZB.

You're cheating a bit here, suddenly the leds need wires to ground...

[boz@bzcore.com]

Same exact circuit, much cleaner,  a lot less wires and no ratsnest, 15 wires versus 2 on the BZB.

You're cheating a bit here, suddenly the leds need wires to ground...

Thats fair, but unintentional, the Arduino circuit came first and then we deconstructed it to the BZB, so taking into account what you pointed  out and brought to my attention, it is 10 wires to 2 on the BZB, not 15 wires to 2 on the BZB.

Thanks for the correction.

BOZ

[NiHaoMike]

Putting the I/O in the middle means that those rows would no longer be useful with standard DIP chips.

[boz@bzcore.com]

Putting the I/O in the middle means that those rows would no longer be useful with standard DIP chips.

Thanks for the input NiHaoMike, that was taken into consideration during  the design phase.

The limit of the straddle is just a portion of the Breadboard, There is plenty of space on the breadboard straddle for dip chips at either end and there is also a dip specific accessory “flying bridge” that plugs into the OutRigger IO port ( the 28 pin standardized interface on the bottom ) that the OutRigger Shield Extender and other accessories plug into, which is designed for the specific use you have brought attention to.

The strength of the BZB is its modular design, you can mix or match the just what you need elements, no matter what configuration or project level you want to work at, whether you are a brand new user learning, or a long time user expanding, it grows with you and because there is easy access to all pinouts down the middle and with the standardized OutRigger IO port underneath, expansion is only limited by what you or the rest of the community can design to fit your needs.

Thanks again

BOZ

[PedroDiogo]

Hi Bob nice to see you in the forum.

Do you plan to release the BZB with those breadboards ? I bought a couple on ebay a few years ago and they are really poor quality. I know they are much cheaper but you should also take quality into account, considering the breadboard is 80% of your product.

[johnboxall]

Well congratulations are in order, they've made their funding goal.

As an aside, here's a couple of articles I found interesting:
http://www.siliconfarmers.com/post/2012/09/09/Kickstarter-finances-101.aspx
http://www.siliconfarmers.com/post/2012/10/23/Kickstarter-finances-102.aspx

[johnboxall]

Well it's February - how's the project going?

[johnboxall]

Well it's almost the end of June - how's the project going?

[mikeselectricstuff]

Kickstarter..Arduino..

[Simon]

I still think it's a good idea.  It saves a ton of breadboard space.  (I know there are some people that are a bit envious of funds being raised on kickstarter - blah blah blah...oh well)

Looking at the pic more closely, it seems as if they aren't milling out the breadboard, but rather drilling holes to pass a long pin header into it.  If the header was flush with the other sockets in the breadboard I think it would be a nice little space saving hack.

Exactly it's totally stupid, they have put some long standoffs under the breadboard and stuck a homemade uno to it, pathetic. putting the headers in the middle there is about the stupedist thing ever ! now there is limited IC space but then I forgot most programmers using the arduino don't know enough electronics to wire anything up so the breadboards will not have anything on them !

[johnboxall]

Could people please stay on topic? I'm asking if anyone knows about the product actually shipping, not other peoples' opinion of Arduino users.

[Bored@Work]

Could people please stay on topic? I'm asking if anyone knows about the product actually shipping, not other peoples' opinion of Arduino users.

You could just go to the kickstarter page and read backer's latest comments instead of waving your dick around here.

[nukie]

Breadboard... Hmmm I'm pretty sure I haven't touch those since I learned to solder )

[Corporate666]

Taking two things that are somewhat related, sticking them together and calling it an "invention" is one of the oldest, and lamest, tricks in the book.

I know a guy who has patent on - and I shit you not - a device that is two pieces of PCV tubing cut to a few inches long, capped on one end, and glued together.  The purpose is that your fishing rod goes in one, and your beer goes in the other.

It's an actual invention the guy spent $10,000 patenting. 

Insane.