If you have a thought, even a smaller one, to build your homemade Arduino-like board, on the vtechdesign website is a tutorial with all the components needed and how to do it. The DIY prototyping board is based on the same ATMEGA328P microcontroller as Arduino, while all the components are positioned and soldered by a Veroboard.

The DIY microcontroller board is designed to provide better build-in I/O capability in order to replace the I/O shields needed to perform common tasks. The total cost of the final prototyping board is less than the total cost of an Arduino and I/O shields.