I've mentioned in the past (
here and
here) that one reason embedded DSP is not particularly DIY-friendly is the lack of a simple, easy to program, "all-in-one" board like the
Arduino. I wasn't thinking of the
Spin FV-1, though. The FV-1 is nice because, like a microcontroller and unlike most of its DSP chip counterparts, it includes stereo A/D and D/A and three additional ADC's for potentiometers. The development board available (shown below) and IDE makes it a pretty viable choice for a really basic, introductory audio DSP board.
The board's main weakness is the lack of an "easy" language to program it. Though it's not at all atypical for embedded DSP to be done in assembly, one of the nice things about the Arduino is that its bootloader makes the code pretty easy to write. That being said, Spin's assembly language has a number of things built-in which are very helpful, like the four LFO's. Additionally, the IDE Is Windows only, and the development board is by no means cheap (about $150 against the Arduino's ~$30). So, though it may be the best easy choice, it's not quite there yet.
-Colin
