Interfacing Arduino to the physical world is one thing, interfacing it to a user is quite another. While LEDs, alphanumeric displays and buzzers can provide a basic human interface, tablets and smartphones have accustomed us full-color touch screens with fancy graphics and high-quality sound effects. The CleO smart TFT display shield promises to bring this to the Arduino platform.

Developed by FTDI, the first CleO model has a 3.5 inch, 320x480 HVGA TFT display with resistive touchscreen. No specialist graphics language or mathematics knowledge is required to program the board and a free 20-chapter PDF e-book covering over 80 topics offers plenty of help.

CleO communicates with Arduino over SPI. A camera interface, IO expansion and PWM audio output and built-in speaker amplifier are available too as are an 8 MB eFlash memory and a Micro-SD card slot.

After NerO this is the second crowdfunded project from FTDI. Currently live on Indiegogo, backers are promised a 25% discount ...