The SparkFun RedBoard is an Arduino compatible board; for all intents and purposes it is an Arduino Uno with a few improvements. It combines the simplicity of the UNO’s Optiboot bootloader, the stability of the FTDI USB interface, and the R3 shield compatibility of the latest Arduino UNO R3.

The RedBoard can be programmed over a USB Mini-B cable using the Arduino IDE: Just plug in the board, select “Arduino UNO” from the board menu and you’re ready to upload code. RedBoard has all of the hardware peripherals you know and love: 14 Digital I/O pins with 6 PWM pins, 6 Analog Inputs, UART, SPI and external interrupts. The SDA, SCL and IOREF pins that showed up on the UNO R3 are also broken out, so the SparkFun RedBoard will be compatible with future shields. This version adds an SMD ISP header for use with shields.

You can power the RedBoard over USB or through the barrel jack. The on-board power regulator can handle anything from 7 to 15VDC.