It seems that the downside of a build your own is that you could damage components and could have some extensive troubleshooting. The upside seems that by doing this you gain knowledge on the inner workings of your circuit. You also gain flexibility. This is a debate I am always up against in my day job. Custom app versus third-party.

So is prebuilt always going to be the cheapest solution? If you got the 40 pin picaxe controller, would you have just as much expansion as the Prop-2 Controller? Would the picaxe solution become more cost effective at this point or would the extra components for the extra pins still weigh in heavy?