Today I managed to get the Raspberry Pi B+ up and running. I had some initial trouble with the SD card I was using, the adapter was buggy but luckily I had a spare. I don't know if anyone else has run into this problem, but when I ran the latest version of NOOBS on the B+, I got a warning saying that Raspbian was not compatible with it. The installation was flawless otherwise and I have not had any issues since.
I decided to start with the Xtrinsic MEMS board. It was a little difficult to get it to fit onto the GPIO pins as I was afraid of breaking it. Not only that, the little pins that stick out on top hurt! After some effort, it locked in securely. It hangs over the HDMI port so I had to run it through SSH (my preferred method).
The setup was super easy. I didn't follow the directions on the pamphlet that comes in the box because I don't think it's really the best way to do things. They want you to download a special install image onto your SD card that includes the modifications that will run the board, but the steps to do it manually are incredibly easy. Plus, I had already spent a few hours trying to get NOOBS on my SD card (erasing a card is slow business, try doing it twice). The directions I followed can be found at Raspberry Pi Spy.
There are several example scripts that demonstrate the capabilities of each of the sensors on the board. All of the scripts worked perfectly right out of the box. I scanned the code for the accelerometer and it looks really easy to understand and work with. Modifying this should be a really straightforward (dare I say...enjoyable?) task. There is an option to send sensor readings to the browser, I have not set this up yet as I need to setup a web server first, but this ties in extremely well with my design idea.
So far, I am really impressed at how easy the board is to use right out of the box. I have a side quadcopter project and the sensor board I am using is not this "plug and play" friendly. You really have to get your hands dirty to get that going. I really like that kind of work, but for rapid prototyping, a board like this one definitely has its advantages. I'm guessing that the rest of the boards in the kit are going to be similar. I should say, I've never worked with development boards before on the Raspberry Pi, so this is a whole new world.