Shield pin usage list

OK thanks, maybe there's a project for a bright young lad, if only I knew one.

http://www.duinoaday.co.uk/shields.html
The pin usages are not all defined as you will see but that is the best list of shields.

Some shields are still on my list to add too.

If anyone wants to find out what all the pins are on all the shields then I will happily add it on/create a table for it.

The problem is that often, that info is not stated, they just work. If you want to know what pins they use, you have to work it out.

Mowcius

Thanks for that list Mowcius.

I've tabulated that, looked at a stack of schematics, and generally faffed around to come up with this.

www.robgray.com/temp/Arduino-shield-pins-used.xls

If you don't trust an XLS file here's a screen shot

www.robgray.com/temp/Arduino-shield-pins-used.png

Coding badly: I've done the ones from the Arduino site as well, although most were also on Mowcius' list.

Many still have ? in their row, sometimes this is because there doesn't appear to be a public schematic, with others it's because I had to download a ZIP and haven't got around to extracting the schematic yet.

I've had enough for the moment, gone cross-eyed looking at this lot. But if it's worthwhile I can verify more over time, or maybe others can chip in or the owners of these boards can tell us exactly what pins they use.

I've tabulated that, looked at a stack of schematics, and generally faffed around to come up with this.

www.robgray.com/temp/Arduino-shield-pins-used.xls

If you don't trust an XLS file here's a screen shot

www.robgray.com/temp/Arduino-shield-pins-used.png

Well I can trust it when I'm not on my computer ;D
I have saved that, looks very nice, just need a way to get that as a nice looking table on a website now. If I get the time, i might see what I can come up with.

But if it's worthwhile I can verify more over time, or maybe others can chip in or the owners of these boards can tell us exactly what pins they use.

Well if we can get some kind of permenant web-based version (not google docs...) then it will definitely be useful to a lot of people.

Mowcius

Thanks Mowcius,

A lot of schematics just have signals coming from small 1, 2 or 4-way headers with no real indication of where the signal comes from. You would have to check out the PCB to see where the header is physically located.

Also many schematics show all the Arduino signal names on a header but don't actually use them so you have to trawl the schematic looking to see if the signal was used or not.

Still it's a start, treat it with a grain of salt for the moment, but if you can figure out how to present it on a web page when we're happy that it's pretty right it would be a useful resource I think.

When/if you get around to it, may I suggest a "verified" column that indicates that the info is almost certainly right.

Rob

When/if you get around to it, may I suggest a "verified" column that indicates that the info is almost certainly right.

Sounds like a good plan. :slight_smile:

GrayNomad, that's a great idea. I really like the idea of making it an online resource, and since that's the sort of thing I do in my day job (my actual job is CTO of a web app development company: www.ivt.com.au) I'd love to have a go at it.

Mowcius, do you mind if I have a go at setting up an online shield database or have you already started work on it?

Jon

Mowcius, do you mind if I have a go at setting up an online shield database or have you already started work on it?

Go right ahead. I have been too busy with my current electronics project to do any web based stuff (and my websites need it :().

If you do sort one then I would love to whack it up on my website:
http://www.duinoaday.co.uk/shields.html

Mowcius

I've made a little bit of progress on this. I now have the database structure in place with a few shields inserted for testing, and I've created a basic public UI that lets you browse through a list of brands, then through a list of shields for each brand, then see the details of each shield including a description, a link to the manufacturer's site, an image of the shield, the pin assignments, and notes. There's no visual style applied at all so far, just black text on a plain white page.

While it's still under early development I have it showing nothing publicly unless it's accessed by my IP address, but ultimately it will live here:

http://shieldlist.org

The system already accepts arguments of brand and board in the URL, so for example to view a list of all shields manufactured by Gravitech I can do this:

http://shieldlist.org/gravitech

Or to see details of a specific shield I can do this:

http://shieldlist.org/gravitech/7seg

Right now you won't be able to see anything at those URLs since it only works for me until I remove the IP restriction.

Next up I'll suck in the data compiled by GrayNomad so there's a good base dataset to work from, then try to neaten up the display a bit with some CSS applied to it.

Following on from that I'll add the ability to search by various criteria (such as pins used), compare shields, and submit new shields for inclusion. If anyone has ideas about other features they'd like to see please speak up.

I'm hoping to make it publicly visible this weekend, even if it's just in a crude form.

Jon
Freetronics: www.freetronics.com

Following on from that I'll add the ability to search by various criteria (such as pins used), compare shields, and submit new shields for inclusion. If anyone has ideas about other features they'd like to see please speak up.

I'm hoping to make it publicly visible this weekend, even if it's just in a crude form.

Sounds good.

Mowcius

Good one Jon, can't wait to see the results.

BTW, here's a shield just mentioned on another thread

http://www.skpang.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=140_142&products_id=706

I won't add it to the table because you've probably already grabbed it.

Rob

I pulled the spreadsheet on Friday and imported it into the database, so any additions now I'll make through the DB itself.

I've just removed the IP restriction from the site so you can now poke around in it:

http://shieldlist.org/

There's a lot missing, particularly in relation to display of which pins are used (it's just a list at the moment) but the basic infrastructure is now in place so I can start adding the funky stuff.

Jon

Oh, and forgot to mention that I'll add more information about each shield as well including an image, description, etc. Right now most of them are just minimal information. For an example of one that looks mostly complete (except for the non-functional pin usage display on the right) see this one:

http://shieldlist.org/gravitech/7seg

Jon

Wise Time (1 shield)

Florin Chiperi who makes this shield does not have a company name as far as I know so not sure how this should work but that seems wrong...

The website looks very neat. You going to have some way to compare shields?

I thought before that the best way would be to have a page with them all listed and tickboxes by the side (or similar), then you can select shields to compare and it'll show which pins are the same on the shields, and what their requirements are.

Is the generic board image going to show something (pcb file?)

Mowcius

Yes, I puzzled a bit over how to handle the situation where a shield is produced by an individual without a company name. I settled for using their personal name in a couple of cases, for example:

http://shieldlist.org/andreconcalves/hbridge

I figure I'll just take it on a case by case basis depending on what the shield creator prefers.

Regarding comparing shields, that's definitely my intention. Right now I'm just getting the basic data structure right and some content in there plus display of details for individual shields, but then it'll be easy to add a table that lists shields in a spreadsheet-like format.

I also have a vague idea of having a "compare shields" thing where you can browse through and add them to a comparison table or something (a bit like adding products to a shopping cart), then view the table with just those shields included. Don't know the best way to handle that yet.

My priority right now is adding a form to let new shields be inserted into the DB, then fixing the shield details page so it shows pin usage properly.

Jon

Made some progress over the weekend. The shield detail pages now have a semi-visual representation of the pins used. It didn't quite work out as well in reality as it did in my head, unfortunately, but it still looks OK I think.

I've also added a form for submitting new shields (including uploading a pic). Anything submitted via the form goes straight into the DB, but with a flag that keeps it hidden until I've reviewed it. The form isn't very well tested but it seems to work and it's time I got some sleep.

Jon

Hi Jon,

It's starting to look the business, did you eat or sleep over the weekend?

On the "enter new shield" dialogue with my browser (IE7) the longer signal names (D11/MOSI etc) wrap around and throw the alignment out for all checkboxes below.

On the Jimmie Rodgers page

http://shieldlist.org/jimmierodgers

The link to his home page

Doesn't appear to have anything to do with shields or Arduinos.

Also the spacing between D7 and D8 should be .16" :slight_smile:

Rob

The link to his home page

http://jimmierodgers.com/

Doesn't appear to have anything to do with shields or Arduinos.

Just worked it out, should be

http://jimmieprodgers.com/

Oops, thanks for the fix for http://jimmieprodgers.com. I've updated the DB now.

did you eat or sleep over the weekend?

Not much! In the end I decided to write the whole thing from scratch (right from the basic database connectivity and template parsing up) rather than base it on an existing CMS, because I have a vague idea that it could be good to release the entire source code for the system at some point. I'm already thinking about exposing the underling data in some way, either a basic on-demand CSV export or a proper API. I want this system to be as open as possible.

On the "enter new shield" dialogue with my browser (IE7) the longer signal names (D11/MOSI etc) wrap around and throw the alignment out for all checkboxes below.

Thanks, I'll check that out. I haven't even started on cross-browser testing yet: the only thing I've used to look at it so far is Chrome on Linux, and getting that shield representation to work nicely across all browsers is going to be a pain. But it was very late when I get it half-working, so I went to sleep instead :wink:

Jon

We've hit 61 shields now, and thanks to the assistance of a few people I've now retrospectively added images and descriptions to many of the imported shields as well. My goal is to hit 100 shields listed by the end of this week and to have completed filling in the missing info for all the existing entries.

Still lots of UI stuff to be done, of course.

http://shieldlist.org/

Jon