The Gainer controller in Valentine Red
I saw some early press on this in 2007 that looked promising but now suddenly the Gainer website has really filled-out with tons of good information. This is a really interesting controller board that has a variety of possible configurations. Very intriguing - possibly a new heart for the stribe? Arduino MINIs are expensive (~$60 + shipping for the 2 Arduino stamps). Meanwhile the Gainer is open source and relatively cheap to build (~$30 USD in parts) and includes a USB interface. http://gainer.cc/
The Gainer can be configured for a variety of applications. Check out the specs.
Their website also links to this useful table of commercially avaialable sensor interfaces which I came across but then lost again. Here it is:
Comparison table of commercially available sensor interfaces
