Arduino.

There are plenty of things that can be said for small, green and black objects with white silkscreen and not much else. Normal people would shun these sorts of things off as being 'uncool' or 'uninteresting', but beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and when you don't look very interesting, that's easily something to overlook. Of course, if you're prepared to look beyond certain things, you'll often find beauty within.

And that's what makes the Arduino so special. The image above proves just how unassuming this piece of physical computing hardware is. But of course, it's what it can DO when you start to learn, understand, and start programming, that the real magic begins.

Here are some examples of what the Arduino can do:

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EL wire being driven by an Arduino

Charlieplexed LED cube