Arduino: what next

So you've make some lights flash, hooked up a piezo buzzer to your PC serial connection to play some excellent 8-bit tunes and other such small projects. What do you do next for something more meaty?

Personally I wanted to dive straight in with a 3D LED cube but being more interested in the programming element, rather than construction, I couldn't face soldering all those LEDs together and opted for some pre-made hardware which can be programmed to do some funky stuff. You can get 'shields'  to attach to Arduinos that provide a certain piece of functionality (e.g. networking, input buttons, compass) so I thought that would be the way to go. I found it quite hard to actually find any of these to buy but eventually found Liquidware, an excellent shop to buy open source hardware for various platforms including Arduino. I opted for a Game Pack. This consists of an Arduino Uno, lithium battery pack, input shield, 320x240 OLED touch screen and an extender shield to connect them all together. This combination will essentially make you a hand held games console.

 

 [A warning for UK residents: although this kit is totally worth the money, when it reached the UK it got stuck at customs where I had to pay a further £35 for them to release it]