ARDUINO LEONARDO

Have only tried a couple of trial programs thus far, but already have a great impression. Installed drivers easily(WinXP), software works great. Have many ideas for future projects based on this little gem!

I've been a fan of the Arduino series for some time and am happy to support the organisation by buying their products rather than the clones on the market. This is an official boxed product from the Arduino team.The Leonardo differs from the earlier boards in that the USB is provided directly on the microcontroller rather than relying on a separate chip. This allows the chip to give direct high speed serial port, keyboard and mouse emulation providing further versatility. It does come at the expense of a slight delay on the bootloader startup but this is not noticeable in most applications.This board is a bare bones headerless version of the Leonardo which by omitting the headers for direct connection to other hardware makes it under half the original height. Should you wish to go with headers and are competent at soldering, the addition of 4 Samtec headers, a 6 pin ISP terminal and power connector will convert this into the full product and appear to be a cheaper way of having this full functionality.Highly recommended!

Great

I have spent a lot of time using Arduino microcontrollers, and one of the limiting factors in most any of their legacy platforms has been the FTDI / USB / Printer USB hangups that mean you have to use a form of serial peripheral interface communication that is unfamiliar and a bit clunky to program their units.Recently, however, the Arduino platform has moved towards having integrated USB compatibility built in so that - in the case of this unit at least - I can connect directly from the PC to a micro USB cable and program the unit (as well as provide it with power).If you note on this specific model, the profile is thinner because the DC jack is not provided - as well as the huge old printer-style USB terminal. This means embedding this in a thin-profile case is much easier. It also means that you have the choice of whether to hard-wire your own power source directly to the original power jack terminals on the board. Likewise with all of your I/O terminals - either go with a fixed configuration for prototyping or hardwired configuration for a finished product.In short this is for those slightly more familiar with the Arduino platform - I recommend start on an Uno, move on to the Leonardo, and that the Leonardo makes a great component for a finished product.

Used this to mod my wacom tablet, adding auxiliary keystroke functionality. After a month or two of use, the usb receptacle no longer seats the cable properly and it constantly disconnects. Board is not suitable for daily use.