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The Cardboarduino

Inspired by the PAPERduino by Guilherme Martins, the Cardboarduino was developed by Matt Jadud, a member of the faculty at Allegheny College in the Department of Computer Science. It was originally designed to introduce students in FS102: Technology and Activism and FS102: Art and Activism to the fundamentals of soldering and working with physical computation. To date, over 40 people have built Cardboarduinos.

The Cardboarduino is physically larger than the PAPERduino, and includes space for a 9V battery clip.

The Design

The Cardboarduino is intended to be printed (actual size), cut out, and glued to the front and back of a piece of 5” x 6” piece of posterboard. The builder pokes holes through the posterboard everywhere there is a dot on the top side of the design. It also labels the locations of all of the components, including color bands for the resistors.


The bottom shows all of the pins that need to be soldered together with wire.


Obtaining the Design

The Cardboarduino design is made available under a Creative Commons BY-SA version 3.0 license. It can be downloaded as a printable PDF.

If you are interested in contributing to the design, the original OminGraffle file can be made available—drop matt at concurrency dot cc a note with your design suggestions if you’re keen.

  • Version 20100423 of the Cardboarduino (PDF, OmniGraffle)
  • Version 20100129 of the Cardboarduino (PDF)