We ordered 15 of these DS to use as teaching aids in our public library Maker space.

They are good looking and well labeled. It is very easy for students to find pin numbers and identify the embedded electronics.

They are very rugged with the acrylic plate and feet. very little worry of damage. I have no problem taking these to do offsite training. Just toss them in a shoe box and go.

It is all built in. No need for students to fuss with tons of wires, resistors, breadboards, potentiometers, LEDs, etc. etc. This really allows me to focus on teaching Arduino programming much faster than I would be able to do otherwise. When you have 15 students in a class, just the breadboard setup to teach blink can take 45 minutes.

Much cheaper than purchasing Arduino's with all the breadboards, wires, resistors, LED's. We do not have to purchase replacement LED's all the time when students forget a resistor

The Digital Sandbox is Arduino compatible so students have a large number of options to choose from when they go to purchase a board for their projects later.

SparkFun did a ton of work and created full experiment guides for use with both Ardublock and Arduino. I did not even have to write class curriculum. They did it for me!

Everyone who wants to teach Arduino should be using these! They have saved us countless hours of work and dollars in our tight budget.

I bought this board for my 7 year old to get her into coding. Prior to this she had worked with the hour of code site and this board was a perfect next step.

I have found the Sandbox to be a good intermediate step between drop-down menu type programming and Arduino programming.

My middle school students have chromebooks and I use codebender with the Digital Sandbox to teach arduino. It circumvents bread boarding so I can focus on the code. That turns out to be a more successful way to get girls involved. Once they gain some confidence with arduino, they get all kinds of ideas on things to build. Then I give them an inventors kit and show them how to build their own circuits. Best way to get kids to think like a maker. I used to start with an inventors kit and spent so much time on the tedious bread boarding that I would lose kids on the cusp (mostly the girls). Then I discovered the lilypad protosnap and wished for something similar, but with more inputs and outputs. Sparkfun read my mind and came out with the Digital Sandbox. Love it! Now I have 50/50 girls and boys.

I got this (plus the add-on kit) for a technician at my company who was interested in learning to program small uC's, which we use extensively in our products (scientific instruments). With no extra assistance, he set up the arduino tool chain, libraries, etc. and started programming on his kitchen table. And so did his 5-year old daughter, who was soon suggesting R-G-B patterns to light up the on-board LED's with her favorite colors! Now they are moving ahead to voice-activated blinky lights, reading pots and switches, etc. He hasn't tried the ArduBlock interface, as I recommended starting out with the text editor, since this will be more like the "real" programming interface he will encounter later. All in all, a really good (and fun!) learning tool, backed by all kinds of resources on Sparkfun and the Arduino websites.

The sandbox, programming tool and introductory book are a great package for those new to Arduino, microcontrollers and programming.

Nice product. ArduBlocks could use some help. It's pretty limited.

I really like these as a classroom tool. They are the quickest way for students to get into "IoT", great for beginners as it builds confidence in themselves. Students can quickly get a program up and running, see how the codes work, etc.

As others have mentioned, the SparkFun Digital Sandbox is a great way to introduce kids to programming and Arduino. Since everything is already wired on the board, students can start making it do things right away.

I've been using Ardublock for my classes. Ardublock isn't perfect, but it allows students to get a feel for programming without all the aggravation of misplaced or missing semicolons and parentheses.

Once students see what they can do, they'll be ready to put in the time to learn wiring and syntax. The Digital Sandbox removes these early barriers to learning.

I've been using this to teach a grade 6 student how to program and some basic electronics. It's made the jump from programming to real world easy and so very interesting.

Sparkfun Digital Sandbox will not upload:
One thing I just found that someone else may encounter is a problem uploading a sketch from the IDE. It worked one day and didn't work another. I suspected the usual (wrong board, wrong com port, cable, ....). What actually fixed the problem was sliding the charge slider from halfway to either full OFF or full ON. If charge slider switch it in the wrong position, the board will not allow uploads.

Hope that helps! I plan on buying more for anyone I teach!

Currently only works with an old version of the Arduino IDE. Which makes it confusing to get it up and running, why would I want to install an old version of the IDE just for this? Also, I left my kids computer in S mode so they can only install from the Microsoft store, which only has the current IDE version, so my kids can't use it and they are who I bought it for... Hey SparkFun, a little help?

I teach 6th grade STEM. This year I'm began a new unit on microprocessors with the Digital Sandbox and the kids love it. After finding out about all of the inputs and outputs that were already part of the board the kids were off and running coming up with ideas for what they could create and do with it. We are now starting into the programming and the block format is perfect for teaching the logic of programming without getting bogged down in the syntax. I can see the one board for the class will not be enough and I'm in the process of ordering more. Great job folks.