The Arduino GRANDE is one of my favorite projects I’ve made, not in small part due to the joy it seems to bring. When I demo my oversized microcontroller for people, they often break into a wide grin and shake/nod their heads, as if to say “OK, that’s ridiculous and awesome!” That was the reaction of my friend and Arduino.cc co-founder Massimo Banzi, when I showed it to him at Bay Area Maker Faire 2012. (Note: we both miss my moustache.)

I built the GRANDE to be fully functional — at its heart is an actual Arduino UNO rev 3 routed to all of the GRANDE’s pins, ports, LEDs, and reset button — and big enough to be able to teach people how an Arduino works while pointing at human scale parts. The real ones are just so danged tiny. I’ve done a few talks about the making of the Arduino GRANDE, and recently posted an Instructable about it so you may build your own. I’d truly love to see someone make a GRANDE compatible shield.

Now, as far as Adafruit goes, I’ve got my eye on embiggening one of those lovely Feather boards…