Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a small universal tool to control your “Makers” projects and toys? Wouldn’t it be great if you could rely solely on copyleft hardware instead of taking a detour via a black box?

We certainly think so. We’ve long been hoping to find ways of making different open and copyleft hardware platforms talk to each other and today it finally happened!

David of Tuxbrain announced that he managed to get his Ben and an Arduino setup to talk to each other. In a video he uploaded you can see how he boots the Ben and tells a connected Arduino board to switch a small light on and off again. This might not sound very impressive, but it is a great first step. We hope his example will inspire other copyleft hardware and maker enthusiasts to create nifty setups using a Ben plus Arduino + X :)

If you have questions or ideas, make sure to read the Qi Wiki and subscribe to the developer mailinglist.