Smallest/cheapest possible Python platform?

[Paul Rubin]

tinnews at isbd.co.uk writes:
> Rasberry Pi is available, some have arrived, mine will arrive on
> Monday or Tuesday (I'm talking about UK here).

Early orders have been filled, more are being filled, but there is a
huge backlong and therefore a long wait if you waited til now to order.
If you want one right away, at least as of a week or so ago they were
going for $200-ish on ebay.

The Raspberry Pi is not really appropriate for a low powered portable
application anyway, because of relatively high power requirements
compared to an 8 bitter without all that media playback stuff.  

The Beaglebone (www.beagleboard.org) is slightly higher end than the RPi
and runs Python nicely, though it faces the same issues.

I think a microcontroller (AVR, MSP430 etc) is a better fit for the OP's
application than anything big enough to run Python.  If C is really
intolerable I know there are some micros that can be programmed in
BASIC.