If you want to have a stylish and deluxe Arduino that compatible with the open source, you’ve came to the right place. The project that we’re going to discuss here is about the Illuminato – the elegant and able-bodied open source gadget.

This Illuminato using the ATMega645, where it has twice the code space and much faster code download speed than other ATmegas. The main purpose of this project is to keep the Arduino in shape and in the same time, it can allow to work with the TouchShield Slide, Stealth and other shields without any further medications.

If you refer to the above figurine, you can see a row of gold-lined aerodynamic holes up at the front of the board server. It has two functions, which as:

1. It can reduce drag when the board flies over 200 mph.
2. They also double as in-circuit programming pins, so that you can program the Atmel chip with the initial bootloader.

Beside that, it also has 42 I/O pins in a configuration, where it can accept any shield that was made for the Arduino’s pin header arrangement. The best part about this Illuminato is it 100% open source and GNU GPL’d as well!

You’re always wanted to build a RDS decoder, but you’re afraid that it won’t work for you here? Well, you don’t have to worry about it, as you’ll have the chance to develop a RDS decoder today!

RDS is the short acronym for “Radio Data System” or RDS is a communication protocol standard from the European Broadcasting Union for sending small amounts of digital information using conventional FM radio broadcasts. The use of more and more frequencies for radio programmes in the VHF/FM range made it increasingly difficult to tune a conventional radio to a desired programme. This kind of difficulty is being solved with the Radio Data System (RDS) that has been on the market since 1987.

Whether you believe it or not, the RDS has by now conquered all receiver price classes and is nowadays a must in the standard functionality of any radio receiver!

Basically, today’s project is a very simple RDS decoder that based on TDA7330B RDS demodulator and AT90S2313 controller. The RDS data is being displayed on a 2×16 character LCD. It will show program service name, RDS clock, TA flag status and scrolling 64 characters long radio text. The decoder needs a Stereo multiplex signal to act as input, where it’s normally found at the input pint of a Stereo decoder IC in many radios.