Wireless communication with Arduino boards is something that every hacker wants to do at some point. This is more relevant when using the Arduino Pro or the Pro Mini, as it is usually embedded in a project. That's where the BLEduino comes in.
BLEduino
The BLEduino is basically the love-child of a Leonardo and a Pro Mini, injected with a Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy - BLE) thrown in for good measure. It is similar to the Spark Core, (except the Spark Core is a WiFi unit). The main feature is to allow you to control the board from your iPhone or Android phone. This opens up a whole new world of projects, such as home automation and robotics, which were previously cumbersome to operate.
You could program it to operate various relays around the house, such as turning on lights from your phone, or fill up the kettle before you go to bed, and switch it on from your phone in the morning so it's boiled for when you get downstairs.
For those not into phone app development, they have created a free iPhone app (Android on the way when Bluetooth 4.0 support is released) for you to play around with the board. The app and the board is all open source as you expect.
The even-spacing pin layout allows you to use the board in a solderless breadboard. It also works with existing Arduino shields. How on earth does that work? Well, the Shield-Shield as it's called is basically a shield that transforms the pin layout to that of the traditional Arduino layout. This is a pretty cool feature we think for those who have already bought or made shields and want to use them with the BLEduino.
The Kytelabs team have already smashed their $15,000 target on Kickstarter, but you can get over there and help them reach their stretch goals and be first to receive a BLEduino.