[ratsbane]

Only a few days ago I was playing with the little pump I took out of a broken automatic blood pressure cuff. This is very neat, but really I think you could buy a few such devices and scrap them for the parts for less money.

[lonelappde]

Arduino is expensive because they fund an Italian company and sales fund software and website development and hardware design. Popular kit gets half price junk-quality clones from China soonn after.

Edit: this is is not a Arduino company project, but similar issues apply.