I should get one of those though, I think.
I find them, how should I say, unbalanced. 70 or 100 buttons on a board looks great, but what on earth are they good for on a dev board? Sure, if I think hard enough I can find (artificial?) applications where I would need 70 buttons on a dev board to prototype. But if I keep it real, a prototype application needing 70 buttons warrants a separate keyboard (incl. communication protocol), and even 20 buttons on a board aren't really what one needs on a dev board.
IMHO these boards are made to impress, not to deliver the most value for the developer.
I'll watch this thread with interest. After all the ideas have been thrashed around, someone (GeekGirl) is going to have to take control of the situation and decide on a specification for the design. Then organise people to contribute to it. Without the spec or the organising, nothing will get off the ground so I think it's pretty important.
I want to add another aspect to the discussion, more basic and down to earth than just a feature list.
Since this is going to be a bench multimeter it needs an enclosure. I assume that a custom enclosure is out of the questions, so an off-the-shelf enclosure is to be used.
From my experience, when you work with an off-the-shelf enclosure it is unavoidable to settle early on in the project on a particular enclosure, because the enclosure will dictate to a certain amount how things can be build. It will to a large extend dictate the mechanical dimensions of the PCB(s), their mounting, and even partly the separation of functions into different PCBs (e.g. a separate front-panel PCB, a power-supply PCB, etc.)
I actually like the classic bench-top multimeter form factor like in
http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/product.jspx?cc=DE&lc=ger&nid=-34037.899260&imageindex=3 http://www.bkprecision.com/products/photos/large/2831D_front_lrg.jpghttp://www.fluke.co.uk/comx/show_product.aspx?pid=37725in particular when they come with the rubber protection (BTW, does someone know who invented that form factor for instruments?)
These enclosures are approx. 300 mm deep (including the rubber), 260 mm wide (including the handle), 110 mm high (including the rubber).
Some time ago I tried to find an
affordable off-the-shelf enclosure of the above kind, but I wasn't very successful. Just finding something with the right dimensions was a problem (typically they had the wrong depth / width ratio), most didn't have a handle bar, or they had handle bars which were completely different compared to the ones in the examples (making stacking impossible). And I didn't find a single one with the rubber.
So, if someone knows a reliable source for affordable enclosures of this kind, I'd like to know it. And I would suggest that a particular enclosure is adapted very early for the bench meter.