In a nutshell, it’s a kit to build your own electronic devices by piecing together blocks in a Mr. Potato Head style. You can then write code that controls how all these pieces talk to each other.

This is a very exciting new platform especially for programmers that don’t have the electronics know-how, but have a lot of ideas for creating their own gadgets. I had attempted my foray into electronics by researching AVR microcontroller kits, but I chickened out as soon as I read about BUG.

The guys behind this new startup seem to genuinely want to make the (geek’s) world a better place. Their mission is littered with good intentions and the execution seems top notch. I’m really excited to get my BUG and start playing with it.

My first idea is to build a fitness gadget. I’m going to use the accelerometer as a pedometer, and the GPS receiver to track my position. Hopefully this will result in a full-fledged treadmill-in-a-box.

I’d also like to use the accelerometer/pedometer to calculate the rate of my stride and maybe adjust the tempo of music according to it.

How cool would that be?