Here is a great link sent to me about how to make a DIY Arduino setup. Honestly, I have never heard of this, so I went to the ultra reliable wikipedia, and found this.
Arduino is an open source hardware physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (e.g., Macromedia Flash, Processing, Max/MSP, Pure Data, SuperCollider). The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the open-source IDE can be downloaded for free. Currently it supports the ATmega8 and ATmega168 microcontrollers.
Apparently it is an easy development board. I do remember now that an Atmega168 can be programmed serially. Of course the nice thing about this design is that it uses a USB to Serial cable, so you can plug it into your USB. I actually don’t even use a computer with a serial port, so that is a nice thing.
Here is a truly barebones Arduino setup. Just the Arduino chip and a few support parts. This has to be close to the simplest and lowest cost way to play with microcontrollers. The only special parts are the resonator and the Mega168 programmed with the Arduino boot loader. Everything else you should already have as an electronics hobbyist.
Check out this cool DIY Project here.
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