Meet The Arduino Esplora
— December 10th, 2012
Here’s a new piece of hardware from your beloved OSHW project. The Arduino Esplora is meant for newbies and anybody willing to enter in the world of Arduino, without having to deal with breadboards or soldering. Shaped like a game controller, it’s designed to be used out of the box without extra parts since it comes with many sensors and actuators already on it.
Have a look at the Esplora Page on the Arduino site, you will find Arduino Esplora at Radioshack’s in its Retail Version (like the one you see on top) and soon on the Arduino Store and from our distributors in both Standard and Retail versions.
Boards:Esplora
December 10th, 2012 at 16:47:39
Wow, that sure looks like my Arduino-based Hackvision game system I released 2 years ago…
http://nootropicdesign.com/hackvision/
December 10th, 2012 at 23:47:17
Just use a PS3 controller…Why reinvent the wheel?
December 11th, 2012 at 02:41:20
Wow cool, I wish I could have gotten one of these when I had first started using Arduinos..
And, the average beginner wouldn’t have the slightest inkling of how to interface a PS3 controller with any sort of circuit beyond plugging it in for charging nor would they know how to reprogram the controller (come to think of it, that’s kinda difficult, even for a computer engineer). That’s why 😉
December 11th, 2012 at 07:41:19
[…] Announced today, the $54 Esplora looks like the innards of a videogame controller — it even features push-buttons and an analog joystick. But although it is preprogrammed with a game-controller script, it’s not just for gaming. It also incorporates sound, light, and temperature sensors — all run through an analog multiplexer — as well as a three-axis accelerometer. […]
December 11th, 2012 at 08:49:06
Arduino Esplora – meet your new darling…
het bericht komt, uiteraard zou je haast zeggen, van Arduino blog – die meldt over de Arduino Esplora The Arduino Esplora is a microcontroller board derived from the Arduino Leonardo. The Esplora differs from all preceding boards in that it provi…
December 11th, 2012 at 18:25:41
Can someone please explain what we’re supposed to do with this thing?
December 11th, 2012 at 18:48:24
Hi Emile.
You can prototype interfaces without using the breadboard. Basically is a game controller on top of which you can easily control any kind of game / programme (assuming the program is controllable via keyboard / mouse / serial).
thanks for commenting!
Davide
December 11th, 2012 at 18:59:13
Hi Michael.
I love the Hackvision (as I deeply appreciate your Video Experimenter Shield too) but I see big differences with the Esplora.
We don’t have a video out and we haven’t implemented the TVout library on it (it would be interesting to test it, we wait for the first experiments..).
We based it on the ATmega 32u4, the same as Arduino Leonardo, allowing HID communication, and we tried to add several sensors on board (like the accelerometer, the linear potentiometer, the electret microphone, and so on) allowing its users to play around these features.
best
davide
December 12th, 2012 at 18:57:05
I can’t seem to get this in Canada. We have no Radio Shacks. Please advise me how to get it.
December 13th, 2012 at 16:17:00
This is an awesome idea. I teach an intro computing course using Scratch and PicoBoards, and the Esplora would make an excellent addition to my course and I am sure my students will love it.
I am also glad they are using Leonardo as the basic platform as it would make it a breeze to interface, not only with Scratch (although writing the sketch to make the Esplora behave like a PicoBoard would be very easy) but also with other programs like Construct2 which we also use in this class for side-scrollers and platformers.
My Italian is (a lot) rusty, but I wanted to say “Forza il Arduino Squadra!”
December 13th, 2012 at 17:44:55
Hello Arevirlegna.
Thanks for the good words: feel free to submit your class projects for the Arduino Blog!
The Italian way of what you meant could be: “Forza Team Arduino!”, unfortunately Squadra is really soccer-related 😉
thanks for commenting,
Davide
December 13th, 2012 at 17:46:29
Hi.
We are going to blog about the Esplora on the Official Arduino Store soon: stay tuned.
best
davide
December 14th, 2012 at 09:18:24
What’s that stupid game controller? Please bring something useful like Due with integrated Ethernet or Wifi to be able to compete against RaspberryPi.
December 19th, 2012 at 18:30:27
I’ve been making game controllers with Arduino lately, and I think that this is great.
December 20th, 2012 at 03:00:44
To all the haters: this is a product aimed at bringing more people in, not people who already comment on arduino’s blog. It’s not to say you can’t have fun with it too, but the inclusion of Tinkerkit i/o should have spelled it out for you.
I’m psyched to get my hands on a few of these – we’ve been planning educational events for kids and young adults (and everybody, really) at the Philadelphia Game Lab and I had been wanting to get something going with one or more local hacker spaces for some time – the Esplora seems like a perfect “don’t panic” piece of ware to introduce game design via controller design to neophytes and newbs.
Speaking of my hands and the Esplora – are they for sale yet?
December 23rd, 2012 at 05:52:27
umm…. this is great but how do we power this thing besides the USB connection?