The Freetronics LeoStick is an amazing little Arduino-compatible board, and now we've made it even easier to build your own micro-sized projects on it with the introduction of the ProtoStick.

The ProtoStick provides 70 general-purpose plated-through holes for you to add your own parts to your LeoStick projects. It includes markings for the ICSP header as well, so you can choose to either use those holes for your own purpose or you can fit a female header to bring ICSP connections up to your project.

Because the board is so tiny we didn't want to waste space using an entire row of pads just for the header breakouts, so instead we put a tiny row of breakouts between the headers and the first row! That makes it easy for you to jumper across from any header to your circuit.

We'd love to hear about any projects you build using the ProtoStick, so make sure you jump on the Freetronics Forum and tell us about it!

A little while ago Marc and I recorded an internal training video for Jaycar staff to explain what Arduino is all about, and a cut-down version has just been posted on YouTube. Check it out!

Prolific "repurposer" Matt Evans is well known for taking old or discarded electronics and giving it new life. When he departed for the UK earlier this year he was given a Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) module as a parting gift - very appropriate!

He then combined it with a phone charger, some random bits of wire, and a Freetronics LeoStick:

Matt said: "The VFD has a row of 0.1" pins and is odd in that it's not serial nor HD44780-style, just ASCII over D[7:0] and Write/Busy handshake lines - the Leostick pushes straight onto the pins to drive it."

If you look to the left of the VFD you'll see the LeoStick connected to the side, driving characters to the display.

Nice work, Matt!

Check out this great video showing how a group of people with different skills and backgrounds came together to build an environmental monitoring system. One of the key components is a Freetronics EtherTen, which acted as a communications gateway for the system by linking sensors to the Internet via a 3G connection.

From the video description:

On the 23 of February ScienceMob organised a sprint event with Gaia Resources, the JCU eResearch Centre and Townsville City Council. Many of us were strangers working with systems we were not familiar with.

The event took place at the Rowes Bay sustainability demonstration house, a pre-1980s concrete block home that has been retrofitted with energy efficiency measures and renewable energy solutions with a focus upon the benefits of maintaining biodiversity through planned urban landscapes.

Our plan was to make 8 subterranean enclosures and monitor their temperature with different types of covers. We chose galvanized iron as our roofing material and painted half of our roofs black and the other half white. We also used various thicknesses of insulation and left one black and white treatment un-insulated. 

Temperatures were measured using the maxim DS18B20 1-Wire digital thermometer. These sensors were connected to a solar charged lithium ion powered Seedunio Stalker v2.1 board with XBee wireless communication. Data was transmitted to an XBee module on an EtherTen connected to a 3G modem via an ethernet connection.

Information was then sent by a web service to Gaia Resources' servers in Perth and visualized on the web using Google APIs.

Preliminary results showed that a plain white roof without insulation may be better than a black roof with insulation; we will make the visualization and setup details available to the general public in the coming months so that you can watch the progress of the experiment from wherever you have an internet connection.

Michael Carey's experience in the marine electronics industry and with amateur radio means his first ever Arduino project hasn't been the typical blinking LED: instead he interfaced a MuRata GyroStar rotational sensor to a Freetronics Eleven!

The GyroStar is a Piezo-electronic device that measures rotation, and they're used in marine autopilots to keep the boat travelling in a straight line. Michael's idea is to incorporate it into a robot project to help it go into a straight line. Check out his video demo:

Nice work, Michael!