I actually received and wrote this review some time ago, but various flat-plan changes led to it being bumped from its planned issue with the first suitable gap being in this New Year’s edition – published, as is so often the case with print publications, just before Christmas. Thankfully, the Touch Board isn’t really something that ages, and the model you would buy today is the same as the one I reviewed a few months back.
For those not familiar with the company’s output, Bare Conductive made a name for itself with a conductive paint suitable for making paper-based circuits. This was followed by the Touch Board, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller with built in capacitive touch and distance-tracking sensor capable of playing MP3 audio files from a micro-SD card depending on which of its inputs were triggered. The Starter Kit, then, unsurprisingly brings both inventions together: there’s a pot of the conductive paint plus a tube for more accurate dispensing, a brush, a Touch Board, crocodile clips, a rechargeable speaker, micro-SD, USB cable, and everything you need to build three example projects.
The bundled book is extremely good: printed on quality paper in full colour and with a modern layout, it goes some way to justifying the far-from-impulse near-£100 price point of the kit. So too does the out-of-box experience: MP3 files are pre-loaded on the micro-SD card, and if you connect the touch board to a USB port for power and poke each contact in turn you’ll be given voice guidance through its capabilities and use.
If you want to read more about the kit, the review is available in the free MagPi Issue 41 PDF or in print at newsagents and supermarkets throughout the UK.
