Arduino Fio

The Arduino Funnel I/O (Fio) is a unique board designed by Shigeru Kobayashi, inspired by the original LilyPad design. This board is an integral part of the Funnel toolkit, which is a complete package for physically sketching your idea using software libraries and hardware. With the Funnel toolkit, you can interface with sensors and actuators using various programming languages like ActionScript 3, Processing, and Ruby.

The Arduino Fio is fully compatible with the Funnel toolkit. It features connections for a Lithium Polymer battery and includes a USB charge circuit. There is also an XBee socket located at the bottom of the board. A unique feature of the Fio is that it has been designed to be wirelessly reprogrammable, which adds to its versatility and ease of use.

Please note, the miniUSB connector is exclusively used for battery charging. For bootloading new firmware, an external serial connection over an FTDI Basic, FTDI cable, or other serial connection is required. Furthermore, the XBee socket and FTDI connection share the same TX/RX pins of the ATmega328. Therefore, you will need to remove the XBee module while reprogramming over serial. However, to avoid this step, it is recommended to use a wireless bootloader whenever possible.

The Arduino Fio comes with an ATmega328V running at 8MHz, an Arduino Bootloader, an XBee socket, and is compatible with Lithium Polymer batteries. It also includes an MCP73831T LiPo Charger, a reset button, an On/Off Switch, and Status/Charge/RSSI LEDs. These features make it a versatile and comprehensive tool for any project.

If you're unsure about which Arduino or Arduino-compatible board is right for you, Sparkfun provides a helpful Arduino Buying Guide. Also, it's worth noting that a portion of the sale of this product is given back to Arduino LLC to help fund the continued development of new tools and new IDE features.

The Arduino Fio replaces the DEV-09712. You can find all the necessary documents for the Arduino Fio, including the schematic, Eagle Files, Datasheet for MCP73831T, GitHub link, Arduino Fio Homepage, and Funnel hardware on the Sparkfun website.