Here is my story, folks.

I have been thinking about stepping out of physical limits of keyboard + screen environment, and introduce some code interaction with outer world for quite a while. I do not know why idea of trying microcontrollers did not come to my head before, but finally it did. I started searching around, found tons of information and options, but every time I was not comfortable and came up with a list of requirements:

• It should be C or C-like supported. I do not think Basic is a right choice for MCU. And I did not want to learn some new funky language just for microcontrollers.

• Coding environment should be Linux friendly – I recently switched from Windows to comfort and stability of Linux and really enjoy it.

• It should be simple and leave room for some hand work and creativity –just switching jumpers on same fancy board is not what I wanted.

• MCU should be relatively inexpensive, but with good set of features to play with.

• It should be a kit with minimal components needed to start.

• Last, and most difficult – good beginner setup and startup tutorial, so I do not spend years just searching how to make first sort of “Hallow world!” for MCU to work.

I thought it would be almost impossible to satisfy all above: Linux, nice language, raw hardware and easy startup and I would need to sacrifice at least something. But I was wrong, and very much surprised when I shortly after found NerdKit!!

Thanks a lot NerdKit, I had lots of fun ! Your CD and AVR with preloaded bootloader – great combination!