Julian Bleecker

In the computational media portion of CTIN541 laboratory this semester, we'll be working with the Processing programming language to learn fundamentals of software and hardware for media arts design-technology. One of the required supplies for the class is an Arduino, which is a small programmable device based somewhat on the Processing language.

I strongly recommend you get one right now. There is only one distributor in the US and, although they are quite efficient when it comes to stocking them, many media arts and engineering programs in the US seem to be using these (they're cheap, open-source/open-hardware, have a robust user community behind them, scale to many levels of user sophistication, can be used in a variety of projects, etc., etc.)

When I went to purchase a spare or two a couple or three weeks ago, there were zero available, when there had been a couple of hundred just a short while before — likely the semester began somewhere and they got scouped up for lab equipment.

You can purchase them at Spark Fun Electronics, $31.95 last I checked. You might cluster your orders and save a bit on shipping.