Bug Labs announces price, release, and new BUGmodule

The moment hardware hackers have been waiting for: final price and release details of the Bug Labs BUGbase and BUGmodules. And even better for those enterprising early adopters, Bug is giving a discount to everyone who buys gear within the first 60 days. Here's the story:

• Pre-orders start Monday, January 21, 2008
• Gear ships by Monday, March 17, 2008
• BUGbase: $299 / $349 (early adopter price / regular price when bought after 60 days)
• Touchscreen LCD: $99 / $119
• GPS: $79 / $99
• Camera: $69 / $79
• Motion/accelerometer: $49 / $59
• New Von Hippel BUGmodule (adds interfaces and I/O ports for further hacking of the BUGbase)
• Bug is also launching BUG+EDU, promoting to the education-market (additional details to come)

[SteveMB @ Jan 5th 2008 3:06PM]

Is the touchscreen color? How big is it?

[kyle @ Jan 5th 2008 3:49PM]

According to their site it is color, but I didn't notice anything about size.

[Joseph @ Jan 5th 2008 3:23PM]

is this like legos for nerds?

[silverblackvoid @ Jan 5th 2008 4:00PM]

kinda. but only way way cooler. hardcore modders everywhere rejoice!

[jay.viz @ Jan 5th 2008 3:58PM]

So this is like virtual cogs with casing?

[silverblackvoid @ Jan 5th 2008 4:04PM]

so, now, bring on the:
"will it play doom", "will it blend", "robotic overlords" comments. its the appropriate time!

[matthew @ Jan 5th 2008 4:26PM]

seems a little pricey... even for the early adopters

[Brooks @ Jan 5th 2008 4:31PM]

How cheesy is it that there is no actual link to Bug Labs in the article, and Engadget linked "Bug Labs" to a different Engadget article?

Search engine poisoning sucks.

[szamot @ Jan 5th 2008 4:52PM]

so basically I will be spending around $600 to get all the cool toys to make something the size of say a frying pan and kind of what Handspring did x number years ago - wow that is, what's the word I am looking for ...... ah... LAME - yeah that's it. This whole set should be about $249.00 then maybe people would actually play with it. I think Eee or the old 3Com Audrey are looking better and better, more useful anyway.

[skulldriveshaft @ Jan 5th 2008 5:25PM]

Hey RYAN - FIX THE LINK

Stop padding your article read count.

You linked up http://www.buglabs.net originally, why not do that now as well?

Is there a schwag bonus given internally to the contributors that generate the most reads/comments?

Anyways, I'll be making my order for some of these things - having to mess around with the pieces themselves before actually making something that works is wasted time - a module that has a specific function, with inputs and outputs, is a better introduction to electronics - after you know what something can do, you could advance yourself by recreating a module utilizing components of your choice.

Think of this as a structured program with defined functions you can modify with your hands :]

[Ricardo @ Jan 5th 2008 5:41PM]

What's the point of this? Making a giant smartphone?

[Josh @ Jan 5th 2008 5:59PM]

The base seems fairly expensive - you could nearly get an eee pc for that money - but the modules seem relatively cheap. It depends a LOT on how functional they are though, ie resolution of the camera, how sensitive the accelerometer is, is the camera static or can it rotate? how accurate is the GPS.

4 modules on the base unit is quite good, and the website has some interesting information, like the base has a tripod mount has a memory card slot, etc

I'll wait and see how the community recieves it i think, i'm not an avid coder and i'm not really a fan of Java so it depends on how easy it is to develop for and how many applications are made for it. Some of the implications are quite good though, basic things like motion activated cameras, gps doodads, touch pad gizmos that you'd want but that aren't really moddable on the cheap.

I think this'd be a superb companion to a UMPC though, both for dev work and for "borrowing" modules.

[Evan @ Jan 5th 2008 6:40PM]

Jeez, for that price I could take my pick of any number of PDAs, a hack-able PSP, or even an iPod Touch.

[Brooks @ Jan 5th 2008 7:19PM]

Well, yes. And for the price of a good Lego kit you could buy a nice pre-built scale model of an airplane.

They're different products for different people. If you want a PDA, buy a PDA. Some people just like hacking things together as a hobby.