After a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter earlier this year the low-cost RasPiO Duino board is now in production and available to purchase. The RasPiO Duino is a small development board with similar functionality to an Arduino Uno. Once it is plugged onto a Raspberry Pi the system forms a complete low-cost Arduino development environment allowing programs to be developed and loaded to the RasPiO Duino. The board can then be unplugged to function independently.

It can also be used to operate interactively with the RPi. The RPi’s GPIO ports are broken out on the board as well. A 72-point prototyping area is provided with GND, 3V3 and 5V rails to facilitate the addition of custom circuitry.

In true hacker style and to keep costs low, it will be necessary to break out a soldering iron to mount the components to the PCB. According to the assembly guide this should take around half an hour. Add to that another fifteen minutes to download the necessary software and the system will be ready to go. In practically no time at all you can build a capable low-cost development environment. If you need to go deeper into Arduino and Raspberry Pi development don’t forget to check out our own Shields, books and development aids all available from the Elektor shop.

The cost of the RasPiO Duino (including delivery) is £14 – UK; £15 – EU; £15 – rest of world outside EU. A twin-pack is available at £26 – UK; £27 – EU; £27 – rest of world outside EU.