Idea I had just now: I'll call it octoduino right now (maybe octaduino)
The idea being, shields and stuff are great for beginners, but still they very quickly have to learn about pin numbers and abilities still
** Would be super nice to be able to make a shield platform where the shields can be cheaper, but not sure how to address that, can't really get cheaper than Chinese clone boards ever... could you make a semi-generic base-board where various SMD chips could be mounted. So you can get 10,000 of that base, then build 10 differnt modules from it by using different jumper wires and solder bridges to configure where thins connect to
And can't always stack all varieties of shields ontop of each other
Octoduino is trying to solve that
An octogon shaped platform, with each side having either 3 or 4 pins (differing amounts anyway)(was thinking power might be included in all of them, but could also figure out some way to make pins toward the center which align with the proper positive and negative as you rotate and plug in)
That means you can rotate a shield 90 degrees and plug it in, or rotate it another 90 degrees, etc
That ability to rotate into 4 different positions means that shields can be made for simple things which might normally have conflicts with other accessories
Can also color code the pins for like PWM abilities or analog read abilities (so some shields would only be placed in 2 positions instead of 4 maybe)
Ideally you'd have enough space so that shields can have pins of their own coming off the side. So say a servo shield could have servo connectors at each corner sticking outward. Which would make wiring up an octobot easier too...