Arduino Uno - 2.54mm pitch compatibility

Love the Uno! :slight_smile:

But, if the 8 pin header for IO 8 to AREF was nudged just one pin towards "ITALY" it would be entirely compatible with 2.54mm pitch stripboard...

I can't see any reason why this couldn't be done (from looking at the tracks on the board) and I can even see a hole drilled into the board!

I now have a proper nightmare ahead of me to form this interface... :frowning:

This seems such a simple little adjustment, and for a prototyping board I'd expect to see a lot of requirement to just "plug into" a board based on 2.54mm pitch.

I think I saw some posts related to the same problem on the Duemilanove?

Anyway - please consider this minor adjustment?

Oh, and if anyone has a clever way to overcome this that doesn't lots of cable please let know!

Offset is 4/10 of a pin and it really hinders cheeep and easy hacking. Great idea but too late now, its the de facto standard for Arduinos and shields. Various workarounds:

http://brettbeauregard.com/blog/2009/07/arduino-offset-header/
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1247778571
http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=374
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1240862639

OK, thanks for the reply... as I suspected... I have to buy more stuff... :frowning: or get creative...

I assume that the reason this wasn't corrected for the Uno was that backward compatibility with existing shields was required.

Perhaps some small updates to the next design could be made so that, if required, the header in question could be removed and re-soldered to an alternative position (along a bit, then either in or out by an appropriate amount for 2.54mm pitch). This would be enough, and would allow both backward compatibility and a more forward to a better standard. It looks to me like there just might be enough space to do this inwards and so avoid making the PCB wider, but I'm surely not an expect on these things.

I'll just leave this in the suggestion box and hope for the future...

Is this common to all Arduinos or is it just the Uno (and it's predecessor)?

As a PS on the above:
I've looked in more detail at the track layout and I suggest the easiest option would be having the alternative holes for the header sited 2.54mm inwards and about 1.25mm towards the IO0 end of the board. You could even pre attach the header there. :wink:

Perhaps some small updates to the next design could be made so that, if required, the header in question could be removed and re-soldered to an alternative position (along a bit, then either in or out by an appropriate amount for 2.54mm pitch).

Some manufactures of Arduino compatible boards do just that, they provide an extra row of pin pads with the correct .1" pin spacing:

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/seeeduino-v221-atmega-328p-p-669.html?cPath=132_133&zenid=9f6118c193cee9f8b7337d4df91a2eca

Lefty

Its been suggested many times, it irritates lots of people. The pin spacing was a 'brain fart' rushing to meet a deadline on the first batch of Arduino boards.

There is a seeeduino board which has an extra line of holes at the 'correct spacing' so you can add your own sockets :

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/seeeduino-v221-atmega-328p-p-669.html?cPath=132_133

Great minds think alike, eh lefty ? :wink:

Great minds think alike, eh lefty ?

I wouldn't know about that. No great minds at this end, as my mind has always had it's fair share of brain farts. :wink:

Lefty

Ah - well there we go...

Shouldn't open standards be the best possible?

tee hee

Good on seeed! I shall await the Seeeduno anxiously :wink:

Good on seeed! I shall await the Seeeduno anxiously

Good for you. The Seeeduino has several features that I think are a great improvement of the standard arduino design. But of course they had the advantage of designing on top of a pretty decent design to begin with. Standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. :wink:

Yes, open source software and hardware plus multi-platform IDE are the key elements of why the Arduino platform is so successful and popular, at least in my opinion.

Lefty