I've done a lot of arduino projects and the '101' seemed really great on paper. After getting my hands on it I realized that it was, at the time (03/2016), not ready for prime time. -There is not much support documentation and only recently has there been and IDE with support built in. -I find that sketches do not run reliably. Specifically sketches that use the new NeoPixel library will sometimes just stall. -Uploading sketches seems to work intermittently and never works (for me) the first time. -You have to wait 5 seconds for your sketch to start (noted on the output of the IDE), considering that the only real debugging on this platform is via Serial, this can me it very frustrating to know if your sketch is working.

At this point you're better off buying a regular Uno or a Teensy and whatever other part you need. Sadly this is the same experience that I had with the Galileo.

All of the soldering seemed fine and this appears to be a solid-built board (unlike the other reviewer noted). I guess he got a [I'm assuming relatively] rare defective board. However, that's not to say that there aren't problems. It would seem that there are some issues with the Arduino IDE (1.6.7) recognizing this board and uploading sketches to it. I installed the curie core, but get compiler warnings and error messages like crazy (like 50 or so lines and sometimes an indefinite hang) when uploading an example sketch to the board. Sometimes, the sketch loads, sometimes it's rejected with errors, and these are simple example sketches. Often times, it takes uploading the sketch over and over again about 10-20 times before the sketch actually loads (though not without errors and warnings in the console), even when the sketch loads and appears to work fine on the board. This is true, even for the simple blink example. Other basic example sketches simply refuse to load at all, or give unpredictable data, such as using the curieIMU examples. I haven't yet used the curieBLE examples, as I literally just got the board in the mail a couple of hours ago. There are clearly some issues with this board working properly with the Arduino IDE and a quick google search would confirm that these problems are systemic. A few solutions and "work-arounds" are offered, which I haven't tried yet, but these "work-arounds" seem to have mixed results, with the majority of people claiming that the various "work-arounds" don't work. I do hope however, that these issues are fixed soon, as the board itself, when it works, seems like a blast -far better than the $6 cheaper UNO, though only if the bugs are worked out. Until then, for beginners at least, I would stick with the Redboard, Arduino Pro or Pro mini (I would advise AGAINST buying the UNO as the purchases don't support the Arduino community and further development of the ecosystem, including software). I guess $30 isn't that big of an investment for a board with cool features but that has a lot of bugs to be worked out. Am I happy with my purchase? That seems like a loaded question. I wouldn't buy another one, that's for sure, at least until the issues are worked out, but I also won't be asking for a refund either or letting it collect dust on my workbench like the PCDuino 2, Udoo Quad and a plethora of other dev boards I bought into over the years. I'm happy I got this board, and plan to have as much fun as I can with it (teaching and learning) with my 8-year old son, and I'm happy this is supporting Arduino.cc. However, and with all of that said, I think a photon for $10 cheaper or the Photon Redboard by Sparkfun is much better investment of your time and money. It has a different feature set, obviously, but the platform is rock solid. So if you are on a tight budget and want a full-featured, rock-solid board, I would go with Particle's Photon, but if, like me, you like exploring new boards and platforms with ever unique features and novel hardware, while having $30 to burn, then it might be worth getting, just expect to encounter problems for the foreseeable future.

I spent the last couple of days trying to figure out why my new Arduino 101 would load sketches perfectly fine from my Macbook but would not load at all from Windows 10!

It turns out that if your user account in Windows 10 has a space in the name ( like "Joe Smiths Account" ) then the Arduino IDE gets lost when it tries to upload a sketch to the Arduino 101 board.

When I created a new user account on my Windows 10 system that did not have any spaced in the name, ( like "JoesSmithsAccount" ) then the Arduino 101 loaded sketches properly, as long as I was logged into the new account.

Hope this is helpful!

I love the new features of the Arduino 101. Integrated 6DOF sensor? Built in, easy to use bluetooth? The promise of a future neural net? But there's a big blemish on the first batch: The quality control is lousy. Out of the box, the headers on my board never lined up. And within a few weeks of using it, the standard digital pins stopped working, leaving me with only the analog pin bank.

There are issues with the IDe being able to upload code to the board even after installing the core, and the examples claimed to come with the software are only partially included. Good design and features, but it needs fixing.

The ESPs have all kind of wierd issues and and seem to be hard to get working. I haven't used any bluetooth but the board works and isn't a hassle like ESPs.

I was really looking forward to developing an iOS control panel for my Arduino projects when I saw the logo for nRF's Master Control Panel: three sliders for inputs, two gauge readouts for output... I ought to be able to construct a highly customized user interface, right? well, so far, wrong. Where is the development environment for the nRF MCP? Or the nRF Toolkit?

Someone's gotta say it: clicking on an arrow icon, seeing the soft keypad come to life on my iPhone, switching over to the numeric soft keypad, backspacing over the last digit of the previous entry, typing in a 1 or a 0, and then watching the... wait for it... LED on the Arduino 101 to change state, is a buzzkill. I have no problems on the Arduino side, I can get it to do anything I want depending on what was transmitted from the phone. But on the phone side this "system" needs some acceleration. Can Sparkfun link to someplace I can find a development environment?

In the meantime, I just bought a LightBlue Bean. At least those folks realized that it REALLY helps to deliver an ecosystem.

I like the Curie on the 101. I like the 6-axis motion sensors. but nRF needs to realize how much more they can accomplish when they expand their potential user base 100X by providing some useful tools. So, i give 5 points for the 101's hardware, but hindered by -2 for the BLE stuff on the smartphone side of things.I'm sure there are some people who can make this thing really sing but I'm not one. yet.

I love the board. There are so many applications with the BLE and built in gyro. The software for the IDE gives me a hard time with Windows 10. Other than that, it's great!