Mounting of Arduino boards??

I'm still kind of new to the Arduino world, so I may just be a little off but . . .

Does anybody actually finish a project with an Arduino? I haven't seem any really mounted in a project box.
Everyone just has the board laying on their desk with all the wires hanging around.

Shouldn't someone be selling an enclosure for all these projects?
Maybe a single decker, double decker and a triple decker? For 1, 2, or 3 shields?

I have tried searching for Arduino mounted enclosures, but have had no luck.

If anyone knows where to purchase such a product, please let me know.

jeffjohnson14 at gmail dot com

thanks!!

I think we may be too busy building stuff to document what we finish. Here is one of my first Arduino projects, a device for testing radio control servos. It was a tight squeeze getting everything in.

The box was one that had been sitting in my junk drawer for years but 'Project Box 1' from Futurlec is the same size and a good fit for the Arduino. Project Boxes


The Arduino is under the home made shield

Looks nice.

Did you just use two of the holes in the main board?
What size standoffs did you use?
Did the box have matching places to screw into?

Most of the smaller boards we make here at work, have a hole in each corner for mounting.
While we are designing the board we also take into consideration the mounting in a box.
It seems like the Arduino design doesn't care about mounting.

Don't get me wrong, it is a great development board, and very educational.
But using double sided tape to put it in a project box, just seems wrong to me.

Looks nice.
Don't get me wrong, it is a great development board, and very educational.
But using double sided tape to put it in a project box, just seems wrong to me.

Would using a longer single sided piece make you feel better?

Maybe take come plastic standoff-like pieces(does anybody sell these?) and superglue them under the mounting holes where the board is?

I'm really not sure how to mount it, I haven't received mine, let alone built a project, let alone mounted it.

Did you just use two of the holes in the main board?
What size standoffs did you use?
Did the box have matching places to screw into?

Sorry for the delayed response, didn't see yr post

Did you just use two of the holes in the main board?
I used all three holes

What size standoffs did you use?
three small squares of 1/8 inch thick plastic with holes drilled for the mounting bolts

Did the box have matching places to screw into?
The box was drilled to match the holes in the board and countersunk so the bolts are flush.


box underside

ah!

That looks really really cool.

Now it makes sense.

Drill and countersink, that is a good idea.

Thanks, for the picture!

I haven't done this with an Arduino, but a mounting shortcut I sometimes take is to mount the board to the standoffs, so that the board has 4 (or N) legs. Instead of drilling/countersinking/screwing, I just mix some epoxy, blob it inside the box roughly where the mounts should be, and stick the board's little feet into the epoxy. Let it cure, and presto - that mistake you made drilling the hole in one corner is completely hidden from the world once the lid is screwed on. (:

Just make sure that the legs are long enough and epoxy is shallow enough that you don't epoxy the board to the box.

-j

Here is a project I did that is mounted in a box. This is a 3 meter analog clock. The box is a wooden box my wife found at a craft store. It looks nice enough that my wife let me put in in the front hallway :slight_smile:

Here is whole thing in its box

A view of the inside

A closeup of the meters

That looks so cool, any chance you could get a video of it in action?

It isn't much of a mounting though, it seems as if you just have a breadboard and arduino floating around in there.

That's kinda where I was going.

Most pictures of the Arduino doing cool stuff, don't show the board mounting.
The board is just dangling and there are wires hanging everywhere.

I love all the things people have done with it, but it seems like the projects are not really finished.
It's nice you can close the lid and hide the mess, but can you shake the box without breaking things?
If you can't gently shake the box the project is not completely finished.

My wife is already on my a$$ for all the network and video cables around the house. I can't just leave a board and wires laying around and call it a finished project!

I also like the idea of epoxy and plastic standoffs.

Thanks for the pictures.

I think people don't bother mounting it because the Arduino is technically a Development board, you develop your circuit, watch it run for 5 minutes, if it's cool enough, get a custom PCB ordered, burn a "real" processor and make it complete, unplug your Arduino and move on.

In the rare instance that your project is Really cool, then yeah, some may bother to mount it.

I probably would, but then again...

It all comes down to what the project is, what it was intended for, and whether you have the $$ for either another Arduino to continue tinkering or to get it built professionally.

gradbert,

I like the retro look of analog meters! Good project! I can imagine the questions you get from guests who see that thing. Then the blank look on their faces. Then the "Why?" but we understand!

You know you can get some double sided tape and secure the stuff on the side of the box. I am sure you knew that!

What I would like to get my hands some analog meters from the 1940's-1950's. Or, switches from the same vintage. The switches we have now on electronic gear is so puny and fragile. People expect to see the high tech 7 seg displays / LCD stuff, but nobody expects analog!

Take it easy.
Steve.

I've never mounted an Arduino board. I'd rather just solder the chip and barest support to a piece of perfboard. If I needed the serial connection though, I'd probably permanently mount the Arduino board just to make things easier.

Still...I cringe when I see finished projects with breadboard mounted and holding everything together. It's just not meant for reliable long-term connections.

I've never mounted an Arduino board. I'd rather just solder the chip and barest support to a piece of perfboard. If I needed the serial connection though, I'd probably permanently mount the Arduino board just to make things easier.

Still...I cringe when I see finished projects with breadboard mounted and holding everything together. It's just not meant for reliable long-term connections.

Yeah, at the very least get a solderable "breadboard" (Pref board?) From Radio Shack and solder a set of headers to that for the arduino.

Yeah, at the very least get a solderable "breadboard" (Pref board?) From Radio Shack and solder a set of headers to that for the arduino.

Except avoid radio shack. Their boards are very poor quality and the pads are easy to lift if you're not very careful. One thing I can actually get near here is good perfboard from a store called Sayal: http://www.sayal.com/. They use FR4 material and have similar layouts to radio shack at similar prices but much higher quality and a bigger selection.

There's plenty of good online source for perfboard.

Oh, and never, ever use a radio shack soldering iron. All they're good for is turning people off soldering.

Meh, I actually use a RadioShack soldering iron.

Guess that means that my e-Penis > your e-Penis. :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously.

Not sure how I got into the whole electronics thing, but one day I went to Radio shack with daddy and got a 20 pack of LED's, a piece of Perfboard, a $10 soldering iron and some solder.

I guess I've just never used a proper soldering iron before(Lies, I made ONE connection with a high suality soldering station last summer at my uncles, but it was "In air" so it no count.)

So the fact that my soldering iron is 'shitty' doesn't phase me.

Either way, I couldn't afford a better one right now if I wanted to, we're in the middle of "moving"(More like living at friends places, did I mention all our furniture?)
I have Zero dollars(Well, lie, I have 10, but that's gonna be spent on a breadboard) and no hope of a job till at least the new school year.

Suggestions on models? Something in the <$50 range

M
Suggestions on models? Something in the <$50 range

In my experience, with a cheap (usually chrome plated tip) iron like they sell at radio shack, the solder tends to stick to the iron, beading on the tip, and will not properly flow into the joint. Anything that makes it onto the joint is overflow from the tip. Heating the joint and applying solder directly to it as you're supposed to just don't work because the heat doesn't flow right. Also, with an unregulated iron, either you don't have enough power, or the iron runs too hot so you lift off solder pads or risk damaging components.

You should spend a few hours with a decent iron, it makes such a huge difference, it really is night and day.

I've heard good things about the Weller WLC100 for a low budget, but I've never tried it and the tips aren't as good as a higher end iron. It's $36 at Amazon.com. Personally, I use the WES51 which is an absolute pleasure to use, very comfortable, heats fast, and solder behaves nicely with it, it's $88 at Amazon. There's also the WESD51 which is identical but has a digital display of the current tip temperature. There's also the WTCPT which is very nice, I used to use one, it regulates the temperature with a magnetic principle so it's mainly a preference between that and the WES51. The pencil is a lot thicker for the WTCPT, which is also a matter of preference.

In my experience, with a cheap (usually chrome plated tip) iron like they sell at radio shack, the solder tends to stick to the iron, beading on the tip, and will not properly flow into the joint. Anything that makes it onto the joint is overflow from the tip. Heating the joint and applying solder directly to it as you're supposed to just don't work because the heat doesn't flow right. Also, with an unregulated iron, either you don't have enough power, or the iron runs too hot so you lift off solder pads or risk damaging components.

That's about how it works for me XD

But my tip isn't chrome plated anymore, I decided to sand it off with some nice 220 sandpaper XD

In other news, I was actually looking at something along the lines of a WESD51.

Does the screen make much of a difference? Should I just go for the analog one, or save up for digital?

I have the WESD51- it means you have a very stable temp-controlled soldering setup at the flick of a switch. Worth the money if you are doing a lot of soldering. It has a cool function that's not really advertised: if the tip temperature is stable for a half hour it turns off. During normal soldering the tip temp would vary five or ten degrees when you touch the cold part with a hot iron, so it watches this value as an indication of inactivity and shuts off if there's no activity. I was totally perplexed by this initially, as i would go for coffee and when I got back it would be off!

I have the WESD51- it means you have a very stable temp-controlled soldering setup at the flick of a switch. Worth the money if you are doing a lot of soldering. It has a cool function that's not really advertised: if the tip temperature is stable for a half hour it turns off. During normal soldering the tip temp would vary five or ten degrees when you touch the cold part with a hot iron, so it watches this value as an indication of inactivity and shuts off if there's no activity. I was totally perplexed by this initially, as i would go for coffee and when I got back it would be off!

Lololol, Looks like that's where I'm savin up for.

Only problem is that my local store sells it for $179, Digikey is 159, not sure about Mouser, but the shipping is $15 :confused:

And I can't use amazon, no credit card, and 'rents won't let me use theirs(Mom says right after I hit "Submit" online to 3 Cirque du Soleil tix XD) And Amazon don't ship to Canada anyways.