What kind of board/shield do you guys want?

Hi,

I'm new here, I willing to design and build some custom arduino pcbs.

I wanted to get opinions from the community as to what you guys want to see board and shield wise.

Thanks

  1. Maybe a nice analog instrumentation shield. with on board ADC of 16 bits or better (TI's ADS1115 looks nice) , a DAC of 12 bits or better. Possibly a programable (or hardware configurable) instrumentation op-amp(s). Programmable reference voltage source. SPI or I2C would be cool for the devices, but make them configurable for both standard arduino boards and the mega boards.

  2. Maybe a high quality wide range DDS based RF generator with 50ohm output connector and 'tunable with either software or on-shield encoder interface.

  3. Maybe a voice recoder/playback shield with built in mic interface or line level audio input/output and a small auduio amplifier to power a small speaker.

That's it for now. :wink:

Lefty

External memory for the Arduino Mega...

Or if you'd like the challenge, external memory, LCD, parallel ADC and DAC on the Arduino Mega. :slight_smile:

I'm with retrolefty on #1 & #3.

KE7GKP also sounds great.

Good ideas guys, let's keep 'em coming.

Does the idea of a shield sound more appealing than having the arduino and the "stuff" all on 1 board?
Any interest in a PSTN 56k dial up modem w/voice shield?

ard2010:
Good ideas guys, let's keep 'em coming.

Does the idea of a shield sound more appealing than having the arduino and the "stuff" all on 1 board?
Any interest in a PSTN 56k dial up modem w/voice shield?

What would most interest me on any product, is if it were a shield, but had the option of headers/pins not being pre-soldered. That way, I could decide whether to use it as a shield, or as an external board connected via jumpers or other means.

I would not being interested in a board with an Arduino on it - with one exception: As long as you made the processor on each board, in some manner, be able to communicate to others via I2C or SPI (so that each was addressable). You would have, in effect, the possibility for a multi-processor Arduino "stack". That would be interesting, and possibly very useful.

A shield that converts all signals to and from 12 volts level so it can be used in a car. 12v dio, 12v adc etc.

robtillaart:
A shield that converts all signals to and from 12 volts level so it can be used in a car. 12v dio, 12v adc etc.

Doesn't the RuggedDuino does that?

However, there is a close implementation called Arduino PLC or something with those keywords. Not sure about the analog part though. :\

brainstrom mode on:

  • Random shield
    Provides real random data (through I2C or SPI), something like an radio that receives and converts noise to bits.

  • Voip shield
    A shield that can connect to VOIP phone calls (not the audio part but to interact with connection stuff)

  • Phone charger shield
    A shield that controls the charging of a mobile phone (monitors the load)

  • landLine telephone Switch shield
    Can switch on/off landlines, optionally with a RTC

  • Serial Shield
    Provides multiple (4) HW serial ports with big buffers
    switchable to RS485?

  • Power supply shields
    Solar ? will it provide enough?
    Backup battery (UPS alike)
    Battery Shield (Holds 2x3 AA) - rechargeables prepared

  • Cover Shield
    A small box that can fix an Arduino by using the shield pins (top part can act like an umbrella :slight_smile:

  • Status shield
    Has for every line a LED that shows if it is LOW/HIGH (dimmer if PWM or an analog voltage)
    e.g. shows (implicitely) SPI I2C communication

  • Light Dimmer shield
    Control 4 lights in a living room, => in general a Domotic Shield

  • Navigation shield
    Holds compass and GPS

  • Meteo shield
    with room for - humidity, temperature, airpressure, airquality,... sensors

enough for coming months :slight_smile:

I second Lefty's DAC / ADC is a good one,
also second the multicore-shield from cr0sh

I like those ideas. I'm surprised the AA battery shield hasn't been made available. A AA battery shield with footprints for a bluetooth module would untether the arduino and allow OTA programming.

Sounds like you all like the ADC/DAC. I wonder when the xmega will be supported as it has adc and dacs onchip.

Here's something I was mocking up a while back. Its essentially an arduino uno clone with the atmega8u2 + atmega328 with standard .100" pitch sockets, so there is no need to have a separate "programmer" like the other tiny boards. It actually measures 0.5" x 1", the copper looking round thing is a US penny. Never built any since it seemed moot, just did it for fun.

Keep any ideas and suggestions coming. Ill start working on some shields and a site.

I would try to use bipolar (right term?) ADC and DAC so both positive and negative voltages are allowed. I can see the single-ended ADC/DAC is quite limited in its applications. Oh, add a shunt resistor near the ADC for crude current sensing. This definitely needs to be positive and negative.

Your mock up is nice but in case you make them you will need an external breadboard adapter for prototyping on a breadboard. Just my 2 cents.

Personally I'd like built-in RS485 networking, but don't do that because I'm already working on one :slight_smile:


Rob

robtillaart:

  • Status shield
    Has for every line a LED that shows if it is LOW/HIGH (dimmer if PWM or an analog voltage)
    e.g. shows (implicitely) SPI I2C communication

Oooh, a breakout box for your Arduino! Sounds very cool.

I suppose a Tricorder is out? :roll_eyes:

I suppose a Tricorder is out?

I like that one, a tricorder shield, but only if it includes a BORG detector! :wink:

ard2010:
Here's something I was mocking up a while back. Its essentially an arduino uno clone with the atmega8u2 + atmega328 with standard .100" pitch sockets, so there is no need to have a separate "programmer" like the other tiny boards. It actually measures 0.5" x 1", the copper looking round thing is a US penny. Never built any since it seemed moot, just did it for fun.

That's is awefully small. Looks great! I've seen 2 other mini-boards such as yours. I think yours is slightly smaller than the other 2.

Just a thought, the matrix holes may be perfect for male headers ready for some wire wrapping.

As 12 august is the 30th anniversery of the PC -

I would like a coprocessor shield for floating point operations with a 8087 or another one. It should be faster than the internal floats routines of Arduino of course.

Some pseudocode

// y = sin(3.45);
Coprocessor.setX(3.45 );
Coprocessor.sinX();
y = Coprocessor.getX();

// y = ln(10);
Coprocessor.setX( 10);
Coprocessor.lnX();
y = Coprocessor.getX();

// y = ln(x) * sin(x);
Coprocessor.setX( x);
Coprocessor.lnX();
Coprocessor.YisX();
Coprocessor.setX(x);
Coprocessor.sinX();
Coprocessor.mul();
y = Coprocessor.getX();

A small test shows that 10000 y = sin(x) takes 1159 millis. => 1 sin() call including assigning 116 micros.

So the setX() the getX() and the sinX() should not take more than 116 micros.

assuming bytes can clocked in/out at 1 Mhz:

A float == 32bit so at least 64 micros are needed for set/get,
leaves 52 micros, at least 8 micros to send the command code (assume 256 command codes)
leaves 44 micros to calc the sinX()

Q: what is the maximum speed of the SPI bus?

Googled this while writing the above ..

  • I like the serial debug option !!

I would like a coprocessor shield for floating point operations with a 8087 or another one.

I always thought the below coprocessor would be a very cool thing to have on a shield. It does a lot of other things along with floating point, GPS numa parsing, 2 12 bit A/D pins, serial port, and a lot more. Can interface with a arduino via SPI (fastest method), I2C, or serial. They even have a arduino software library download avalible. What I've never seen is a bench mark on it's floating point ops Vs the AVR software floating point results.

http://www.micromegacorp.com/umfpu-v3.html#features

Lefty

robtillaart:

  • landLine telephone Switch shield
    Can switch on/off landlines, optionally with a RTC

Here's a brilliant idea.
One other nice Idea would be to hack into the caller ID when receiving a phone call and automatically disconnect the call if the number didn't match the stored numbers in memory. This would make my day, shutting down the line to those **#¤&%#%&"#¤% automated telemarketers.

@Lefty,

What is the max speed of SPI (in practice) ? 2Mb/sec?

scanned through the documentation a bit but found no comparison/performance chart. Some examples I saw keep the calculations as much in the FPU as possible, mind you 128 floating point registers is quite a bit (especially compared to the 2K RAM of Arduino).

And a 12 bit ADC. (4096 steps)

Unfortunately they are not in stock yet. Think a MathShield is a winner.