A busy week in the Dollar Store; GD3X

Electric Dollar store launched this week. Promoting things online is tricky. One way is to place ads. I don't really like that idea - right now I prefer to sink the business capital into stock and product development instead of advertising. So with an advertising budget of $0, I'm relying on people to spread the word, and am always hopeful that news sites will pick up the story.

That happened Sunday when Slashdot picked up my submission. The resulting orders gave us all something to do for the rest of that day.

I also spent a little time writing up and photographing a tiny demo, and posted it on instructables. It's a 3-LED stop light. If you're looking for something electronic to assemble with the kids, it might be worth taking a look.
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Gameduino 3X

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The first proto board of the updated Gameduino 3 arrives tomorrow. The original GD3 used an FT810, but this version will be using the backwards-compatible BT815. Outwardly there will be no change, just a couple of lines of code in the GD library to detect the new chip. So I'll be naming this product GD3X - to distinguish it from its predecessor. The BT815 is quite a step up in capabilities. It has an attached SPI flash channel, so graphics can live on the flash. I'm still deciding what to preload into the flash, if anything. A proper Chinese font is one option. An icon set (like this one) is another. We'll see. I'll have first protos running next week, and will post pictures.