Ricardo Moran wrote:
> Hi everybody (and sorry if you receive multiple copies),
>
> I would like to announce a new version of Physical Etoys, now with a lot of
> new features:
>
>    1. First of all, it's based on Etoys 5.0 so it incorporates all the
>    bug-fixes and new features from the Etoys release.
>    2. We are now focusing on the two main hardware platforms: Arduino and
>    Lego Mindstorms Nxt. For the rest, we will publish a set of "external
>    modules" that you can install in your Physical Etoys version.
>    3. Also, we now support an argentinian version of Arduino, which is
>    called DuinoBot and it's currently being used in a lot of argentinian
>    schools.
>    4. We added new devices for arduino and now we also support the use of
>    digital devices attached to analog pins.
>    5. We added two new objects that let you graph the input of a variable
>    across time and save it to a csv file.
>    6. We added a new programming mode that lets you compile your scripts
>    and have them running inside the robot, in contrast to running them in the
>    computer and communicate with the robot via bluetooth or usb. We believe
>    this opens a lot of new posibilities for the Physical Etoys users.
>    7. And finally, we fixed a lot of bugs that make the software a lot more
>    stable (or so we hope :).
>
> I would like to use this opportunity to publicly thank all the people from
> the Etoys community for their work on Etoys 5, this latest version is much
> better than the last and I encourage you all to try it.
> And also, I would like to announce that Physical Etoys 2.0 is going to be
> installed by default on all the laptops of the "Conectar igualdad" program,
> which is kind of like the argentinian version of OLPC (but for older
> students). So we are *really* excited about this!
>
> Now that you're all as excited as we are :) you can download and try
> Physical Etoys 2.0 from our blog:
> http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/projects/physical-etoys/.
>
> Cheers,
> Richo
>
>   
Interfacing with Arduino is very cool.  It is high on my list of things 
to play with (as time permits)

Now in case you ever need anything more industrial/powerful (but more 
costly) here are a couple of things I have been kept a wishful eye on 
for a couple of years (but I have not yet had time to play with). I 
share this on the random chance someone gets interested in it before I 
get a chance to play - hopefully early next year.

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7350
200MHz ARM9 CPU;  32MB SDRAM (64-128MB opt)
8MB RAM Framebuffer;  able to drive TFT-LCDs via custom FPGA
5K LUT FPGA  <----------------
Boots Linux 2.6 in about 1 second <----------------
1 10/100 ethernet port,  2 USB 2.0 (12Mbit/s max),  1 SD Card slot
$129

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7550
250MHz ARM9 CPU;  64MB DDR-RAM;  256MB SLC XNAND Drive
Customizable 5K LUT OpenCore FPGA <----------------
1 10/100 Ethernet,  33 DIO, SPI and I2C interfaces,  8 TTL UART, 1 CAN bus
$89

http://www.embeddedarm.com/about/resource.php?item=628

http://www.embeddedarm.com/documentation/articles/reliability.pdf

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/pc104-peripherals.php

cheers -ben