When prototyping an idea, it’s important to choose components that will help prove the concept, allow the design to be evaluated and give a basis from which the final product can be derived. There are many options for hardware to use in prototypes, from the costly, proprietary packages like National Instruments to the low-cost and open source options like Arduino, and the multilingual, mid-cost solutions like Phidgets.
Different projects have different requirements, but Phidgets safely falls in the middle of the two extremes providing easy integration and cost-effectiveness. However, both National Instruments and Arduino type products can be useful depending on your goal.
Phidgets 