Comments about oreilly MintDuino:

This is a great book if you have some Arduino Due/Uno experience and are looking to develop a dedicated embedded microprocessor. In short, this shows how to set up an Arduino without the board, using the very minimum of components, and a simple solderless breadboard.

Note regarding my previous review: The recent update provides a much-needed explanation of setting up the Mintduino part of the project. This completes the book, and makes it totally work.

The book approaches the development of a nifty little push-button reflex game, you know the kind where a light lights and you have to push a button first? Since the "game design" is so familiar, the writers focus on the physical parts that make up the game, and the programming required to make them work. Start to finish the project will take a couple of evenings at most, and you'll learn a little, and have a lot of fun along the way.

The photography in the print edition is basic black and white, which is ok, since most of the photos are close-ups of various stages of the build. The photos in the eBook version are fantastic, full color closeups of the project from start to finish. I usually like having the book on the table with me, keep my notes in the margins, yada yada yada, but the eBook version of this is worth the price for the photos alone.

The book is written in a series of tasks, where a task provides a small amount of hardware assembly, some new code to make it work, and an explanation of what's happening. While the author (or Oreilly) offers all of the code samples on the Oreilly web site, the code given is only discussed at an opcode level (E.g. "If state1 is HIGH, the lightLED1 function is called"). I think this is well done - more detail would not be appropriate for a 30 page book like this, but it gives you enough to know what part of the code is doing what. Sets up some experimentation - poking the dough as it were - to see what happens when you change a variable, or swap a different colored LED in place.

Written in a soft cover paperback style, this book will become a handy reference when I'm sticking some chips on a board for some dedicated sensing. I recommend the book, and PDF eBook for beginning Makers with a small amount of Arduino fiddling experience.

Comments about oreilly MintDuino:

The title of this book is misleading. It infers that you're going to get 30 pages of "Building an Arduino-compatible breadboard microcontroller". Instead, it offers instructions on how to use a MintDuino that you've bought to create a "reflex game".

On page 2 the book reads: The Parts You Need: 1 MintDuino - Assembled. (see http://makeprojects.com/Project/Build-a-Mintronics-MintDuino/608/1 for assembly instructions)
Next, the book breaks the 10 minute process of connecting 3 LEDs and resistors, plus two pushbutton switches to the MintDuino into 5 steps over the remaining 28 pages. I'm not making this up.

I was looking for, and expecting to see, a book that goes into some detail about programming the chip using FTDI, maybe something about different crystal values/clock speeds/configurations, etc. I would love for it to include some information about bootloaders, what the options are lately, advantages of using one over another..

The author has written a couple of other books about LEGO Mindstorms - I'm not sure why he considered himself knowledgeable about this subject, he doesn't show it in this book.

This book is a waste of time, and even at $5, a waste of money.