The Micro Magician V2 is an amazing board from Dagu that has loads of great features that you'll be able to use for a huge variety of robot projects.

Essentially this is an Arduino, with an onboard dual channel motor controller, a 3-axis accelerometer, an IR receiver and a port that can be used to attach a bluetooth transceiver. This means you can build a robot and drive its motors with just one board, you don't need any extra shields. Also, the really cool thing is that Dagu have managed to cram all of these features onto a board measuring just 6cm x 3cm, that's nearly half the area of an Arduino Uno!

The full list of features are

• Arduino compatible - recognised as an Arduino Pro or Arduino Pro Mini (3.3V, 8MHz) w/ ATmega328
• Built in dual FET "H" bridge with current limiting (set to 910mA per channel), motor stall detection and electronic braking
• Microcontroller runs at 3.3V, so it's safe to connect this board to a Raspberry Pi
• Built in 3-axis accelerometer with 0G detection and selectable ±1.5G and ±6G ranges
• Built in 38KHz IR receiver providing 128 virtual buttons when using the Sony IR protocol
• 4 pin female communications header for 3.3V wireless transceivers (Bluetooth or Xbee)
• Accepts input voltage from 3.6V to 9V
• Built in LDO +5V, 1A regulator (input voltage must be at least 5.5V) to power external 5V devices
• Built in LDO +3.3V, 500mA regulator
• Reverse polarity protection rated at 6A for protecting servos and motor driver IC
• Reverse polarity protection rated at 3A for logic and other 3.3V devices
• Built in USB using the CP2102 interface IC
• 8x digital I/O pins terminated with 3 pin male header and selectable supply voltage for logic / driving servos
• 3 pin male headers on analog inputs to provide 3.3V power for sensors
• ISP socket for bypassing the bootloader and programming the processor directly
• Power, Rx, Tx, D13 and IR signal indication LEDs
• Software library provides functions for IR decoding, angle / impact detection, motor control

Useful Links

Manual

Arduino Library

Tutorial showing how to use the Micro Magician V2 to build a robot that uses 'Bump Navigation'