For my own applications, I realized I was often soldering a PIC and a few components to a perf board, or using a more-costly dev board to do simple tasks. I do like the "shield" idea of the Arduino. I designed a board with a minimum set of features needed for many applications without any extras. The "Throw Away Pic" (TAP) board was born. It has dedicated connectors for ISCP, UART and I2C/SPI, a couple analog input/gp connectors with power and ground, and a couple PWN/gp connectors also with power and ground along with a couple switches and 4 LEDs. It supports many 28 pin 18F series PICs. Additionally, all the port pins are brought out to two rows of headers to add a daughter board for applications where additional components are needed. This configuration seems to fit most my applications, where the PIC is interfacing with the outside world. The design is licensed under a Creative Commons agreement and I'll provide Gerber files to anyone who wishes. Details are available here. There's also a article on a DS1307 RTC daughter board and an 8-servo controller daughter board will be published soon. Jon -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist