The Dact Is an Open-Hardware Ruggedized Alternative to the Arduino Nano

Semi-pseudonymous maker Rasmus "rallekralle11" has designed an open source microcontroller board built to offer a more rugged alternative to the Arduino Nano R3, with overcurrent and shortage protection on all input/output pins: the Dact.

"[The Dact has] overcurrent (short) and overvoltage protection on all IO pins, VIN [Voltage Input] reverse polarity and short protection, USB and MCU [Microcontroller Unit] overcurrent protection as well as reset pin overvoltage protection," Rasmus writes of his board design. "And USB [Type]-C."

The layout of the board is designed to be breadboard-friendly, mimicking the Arduino Nano R3's footprint and pinout as closely as possible — making it a drop-in replacement for projects which were designed against the Nano but that could benefit from a little more protection.

It's not a wholly ruggedized device, however. Rasmus admits that the 5V and 3.3V pins lack overvoltage protection: "I tried," the maker explains, "but it wouldn't fit." There are other trade-offs in the design too: "The onboard 5V regulator can only supply 150mA, there's no reset button and there's no way I could fit all pin identifiers, so I didn't add any."

The current design has been published to GitHub under the permissive CERN Open Hardware License - Permissive, but anyone interested in making their own needs to be aware: "It isn't [yet] 100 percent [Arduino] Nano compatible," Rasmus admits. "I put the ICSP header on backwards. I'll fix that for the next version."