By definition, physical computing deals with the study and development of interactive systems that sense and react to the analog world. In an analogous way, physiological computing can be defined as the field, within physical computing, that deals with the study and development of systems that sense and react to the human body. While physical computing has seen significant advancements leveraged by the popular Arduino platform, no such equivalent can yet be found for physiological computing. In this paper we present a novel, low-cost and versatile platform, targeted at multimodal biosignal acquisition and that can be used to support classroom activities, interface with other devices, or perform rapid prototyping of end-user applications in the field of physiological computing. We build on previous work developed by our group, by presenting an improved version of the BITalino platform, emphasizing on the hardware characterization, benchmarking and design principles.