The “One Dollar Board” Project Aims to Teach Electronics in Developing Countries (Crowdfunding)

I’ve already tried a one dollar board based on STM8s in the past, but it required a separate STLink debugger, installing a toolchain, and a few other steps. The “One Dollar Board” project, born in Brazil, has different objectives, as it aims to provide an easy way for pupils around the world to getting started with electronics, by simply connecting it to the USB port of a computer or board capable of running the Arduino IDE, and following the instructions printed on the board.

One_Dollar_Board

One Dollar Board specifications:

  • MCU – 8-bit MCU (likely Atmel AVR) with 8 KB flash
  • 6x GPIO (input and output ports)
  • USB – 1x USB port for power and programming
  • Misc – 2x LEDs, reset button
  • Expansion – Spaces for Wifi ESP8266, Atmel 24C256 serial EEPROM (256 KB), and L293 Driver motor (unclear where though)
  • Power Supply – 5V via USB
  • Dimensions – Compatible with Arduino UNO

You can see all 8-step instructions on the board. The URL achestnut.org shown in steps 1 & 2 does not work, and onedb.cc & onedollarboard.com redirect to the Indiegogo page so I guess it’s still work in progress. But the video below explains how this is supposed to work.

The board will be open source hardware, and released under a Creative Common license.

The project has now been launched on Indiegogo with a $50,000 funding target. You can indeed get the board for $1, but shipping adds $3, but it might be worth getting larger quantities, as $25 will get you 25 boards for just $6 extra for shipping. You may also pledge to donate boards to an NGO of your choose, and company can sponsor the project by getting their Logo printed on the board for $5000. Delivery is planned during October to November 2016. More details can also be found on OneDollarBoard.org (registration by email or Facebook required).

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16 Replies to “The “One Dollar Board” Project Aims to Teach Electronics in Developing Countries (Crowdfunding)”

  1. This is strange project.
    About board – information 1%.
    99% – only video with strange people

  2. My, name is Claudio, and I am idealizing the project.
    What important information would be placed to increase 99%?
    We want to revolutionize education, creating an electronic teaching programming and electronics, as cheap as a draft, notebook board. That need and seen, when people of my country, Brazil and Africa, there are people who want to teach, but do not have money to buy Arduinos normally.

  3. @Claudio Olmedo
    Demo, demo, demo…
    Demo IDE, Demo projects, demo boards for testers

    Now we see only words, words, words…

    P.S. “Delivery is planned during October to November 2016”
    This is high tech ? Space technology and this board need half-year for manufacturing ???

  4. It seems to be based on Attiny85:

    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/one-dollar-board–3#/

    “- It can be used for various purposes? Yes, from an educational purpose, such as the development of small educational projects, the development of a robot controlled by wi-fi, or as a final product, becoming the cheaper Attyny85 microcontroller of the market.”

    So probably vusb based. Don’t know how much space will be left for actual code after vusb.

  5. @Claudio Olmedo
    There’s also some info that you’d expect to find easily, but it’s missing or not accessible.

    1. I could not find any full pictures of the board, so I had to take a screenshot in the video
    2. You have expansion ports, but there are not documented.
    3. “Spaces for ESP8266, EEPROM and motor control driver”. Good, but it’s unclear where that is. For example ESP-01 module has 8-pin header, but there’s nothing on the board for that.
    4. Even though it’s still early stage of development, there’s no documentation at all that I could find, the exact MCU is not even part of the specs.
    5. Some early demo, source code on github would be nice.
    6. Most of your websites either doe not work or redirect to Indiegogo, and the one that works requires login with Facebook or email.

    1. @cnxsoft

      That’s interesting solution than using laptop.But it’s not easy to coding on smartphone, let’s see who’s gonna push out better idea.

  6. If you go back to the Arduino clones I mentioned earlier then you can program them from a Android TV box with a app store app.

    I have used a amlogic S905 2gb TV box but even they cost money. I did the blink programme to flash LED on Arduino.

    Maybe they could share school PC ?

    It is a problem that a $1.00 board needs a $30 dollar programming device. A Orange Pi or Nano Pi might be better value, less adaptors needed than a Raspberry Pi and GPIO already populated ?

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