Just got my kit from www.NerdKits.com (2 days after ordering, it arrived) and first assembled the temperature to display on the LCD project that was included with the guide (downloadable file from their site). Great kit with lots of explanations and decent pictures to help you along. I even made my first custom project within 3 hours of owning it! My first homebrew project takes 4 lines of text and scrolls on the screen, after each scroll, the lines get mixed up for a new scroll. The NerdKit also waits for text input from PC (VIA serial2usb) and then will switch a line with the new text to scroll.

I am a bit unhappy with the wires on the power supply and the header wires, they are not one solid wire but many fragile tiny wires that keep breaking, not a good setup for a solderless setup. I should solder this to some type of pinned enclosure that I can just push into the breadboard easily.

I was also surprised that all the small parts were just thrown loosely into a "ziplok" sandwich bag. But nothing was damaged...

I was expecting a CD to be included with the kit (like youTube unboxing video shows), but nothing of the sort. I was forced to get the software through registering with their site. Source codes are not all placed in one easy place, you have to go searching through forums, external sites (for scriptlets), tutorials and videos just to get a dozen usable source codes (I need about 100 samples to fully learn from or a complete referernce library to the commands used by NerdKit. FOr almost 100 bucks, there should be more source codes! CompuMike in Arduino forums made it sound like that there was sourcecodes with the included software and more on the site, but the included source codes are on the site as tutorials making the included source code void in my mind.

FYI, the USB NerdKit includes:

• One Atmel AVR ATmega168 microcontroller. This includes the CPU, flash memory, and RAM. This is more powerful than the ATtiny26L and allows for more flexibility in your projects.
• One USB programming cable and circuit. While other starter kits try to integrate as much as possible on a printed circuit board, we've realized that it's hard to learn when so much is "black boxed" away from you. We have a minimal circuit to get you from USB to your own circuit, and in our guide we explain how it works. Additionally, you can use the USB version to communicate between your microcontroller and programs running on your PC, which allows for a whole new dimension of possible projects!