I would rather the high voltage section be mounted separately with proper safety coverings
I actually agree. So I have also made a separate AC board design, see AC-board21-photoview | A seperate AC controller board I have… | Flickr
It has the following advantages:
- its smaller than a shield
- it has fewer parts, and is thus less expensive
- its easier to add cooling to the Triac
- the control connector follows the same scheme as servos. I'll make a shield so its easy to control many units using this kind of connector. Sort of like RoboDuino. I am thinking of stuff like temp sensors, relays, buttons and maybe more.