One environment you might want to try is MHVLib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib - an efficiency oriented C++ library for A

One environment you might want to try is MHVLib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib http://www.makehackvoid.com/mhvlib - an efficiency oriented C++ library for AVR microcontrollers with a fair amount of out-of-the-box functionality. (Disclaimer: it was developed by fellow Hackerspace co-founders, however I personally haven't used it for anything yet in my hobby projects. To date I've either used Arduino for its fall-off-a-log simplicity, or plain avr-libc for simple Teensy programs. The one time to date I have been pressed for performance I just included some inline AVR assembly code in my Arduino sketch. But I'm a microcontroller lightweight.) I really want the ability to cheaply "mass produce" if necessary, but don't want to build everything myself If you want to actually mass produce a finished product from a development board prototype (Arduino, Teensy, whatever) then you'll probably want to prototype first, then redesign your own board around an appropriate AVR chip and get the board fabbed (probably through a few iterations.) IMHO this means you can use pretty much any development board in the prototyping stage.