Back Cortado (Wireless Arduino Dev Board) and Get Notified When it Arrives in Your Mailbox

Cortado just launched — it’s a nicely-designed, very small-footprint arduino board (an inch and a half or so in length) designed for wireless applications. The whole idea behind it is giving the user the ability to turn just about anything into a BLE enabled device, creating an Internet of Things ecosystem for makers, hobbyists and engineers. It’s actually pretty cool because you can program it wirelessly which is pretty novel. Some examples include turning anything into an iBeacon or light sensor, or even tracking the MeterMaid to make sure you don’t get a ticket. They have more examples listed on their website.

Cortado ships with bluetooth LE and an accelerometer built-in, so it’s perfect for prototyping all sorts of movement-detection applications, or pop in a shield and you’ve got a wireless sensor net.

The team created and certified their own bluetooth module from scratch. This presumably helps keeps costs low (Cortado is available today for $18.00 — a 40% discount on retails — via their self-starter campaign) and achieve long battery life. In fact, they’re planning to ship Cortado with a battery and turned-on, so you’ll be able to download their app and get notified with the box arrives in your mailbox.

Earlier this year Apple announced a couple new iOS7 features focused around Bluetooth Low Energy- iBeacon and Notifications. Cortado can operate as an iBeacon, says the team, allowing users to experiment with Apple’s newest offering. The Apple Notification Center Service or ANCS for short, will allow connected devices to receive any notification your phone.

The team is jumping aboard the trend of ditching Kickstarter and Indiegogo in favor of running their own campaign. One of the unique things they’re doing is setting Cortado’s price according to when the backer supports the project:

For the next month we will be holding a pre-order campaign featuring our new product. This campaign includes a special pre-order discounted price for all backers. It will launch at $18 and will increase every day as the month goes on reaching a maximum of $24, which is discounted 20% from the retail price ($30).

They’re also offering discounts of $1 to anyone who tweets about their pledge.

It’s great to see innovation on the crowdfunding side — something that going the self-starter route enables.

Check out Cortado today!