STEP #2 Get an Arduino, or equivalent

The first equipment you will need is an Arduino or compatible device.  Here are photos of my Arduino's.

I bought the small board on the left from http://www.adafruit.com/ and the red board connected is the USB to

Arduino board I bought from http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9716

The board on the right is just a block of LED's and a pushbutton connected to the Arduino as outputs and inputs.

I used the USB board and connected it to a proto-board with a 10uf and 16MHz ceramic resonator which creates an Arduino compatable device.

 And here is the original Arduino UNO R3 which has the USB circuit already installed.

UNO R3

All of these devices can be used to interface with LabView.