It lives!

The circuit boards for the second version of the Rascal, which fixes a couple of hardware errors in the first version, arrived last week. I checked that a few new component footprints are correct and then sent them off for assembly. They should be ready for testing on Monday, August 16, 2010.

The second Rascals are substantially smaller than the first revision. The outline, connector, and mounting hole placements match the Arduino's on both ends, though the Rascal is longer. I was aiming to get the total area below 10 in².

In the meantime, I've developed the first Rascal peripheral, an Arduino-compatible shield for driving high-power LEDs. The first prototypes were supposed to arrive today, but Fedex reports that one of their planes was struck by lightning, so it was not ready to make the subsequent delivery.