We’ve been trying to not pick favorites in the Arduino controversy, or at least remain open-minded to both sides of the story. Some businesses, on the other hand, are clearly aligning themselves.

The Digilent boards are awesome and fast. The IDE sucks, but so does the Arduino one, so I also just used MPLAB X. Report comment. Reply. Chris C. says: July 12, 2012 at 3:59 pm ...

It lets you use not just one or three Arduino boards but seven — Micro, Pro Mini 3.3V, Pro Mini 5V, Leonardo, Uno R3, Nano R3, and Mega 2560 R3.

To start, you need to buy an Arduino. It comes pre-assembled or, for those handy with a soldering iron, in kit form. A fully assembled Diecimila board from the excellent Make costs just $35.

If you enjoy working with microprocessors such as the Arduino or Raspberry Pi and would like to host classes for 10 or more people, the $25-50 boards ...