Well, the EB1 has actually been around a while. It’s the brain child of Tully from Samurai Circuits. A few years back he tried to convince me to work on an inexpensive Arduino compatible platform that could be used for teaching electronics and programming, but without needing a lot of extra pieces (like a breadboard, power supply, USB cables, etc.).
EB1 Arduino Compatible Micro
After much delaying on my part, we came up with the EB1. For those in the Arduino circle, you’ll recognize it as yet another ATTiny85 processor project running V-USB. But, it does have a couple cool features.
You can breadboard simple circuits (think: LED blink, IR remote control input, photosensor) directly on the board. It has a battery holder so you aren’t tethered to a USB port or power supply. Three outputs are open drain MOSFETs capable of sinking up to an amp.
EB1 Technical Specs
This enables some really simple, but still educational, applications.
Check out Tully’s Wiki for the EB1 (here and here), and also the funky paper robots he’s developed (here, here, and here).
Tully’s EB1 Line Follower
In a future post, I will discuss (maybe even rant a little about) the limitations of running a crystal-less V-USB Arduino boot loader. Spoiler alert: it’s the main reason we haven’t made gazillions of the EB1 yet.
(All images blatantly lifted from Tully’s Wiki)