pin incompatibility fix board and mega

[Jantje]

Hi
I'm currently working on a project that uses 5 bought shields and also needs 1 custom shield.
The shields are
3 mega moto shields
1 arduino ethernet shield
1 gps shield
I have been working with the arduino 2009 but with the 3 mega moto shields all pins are taken. So I'll have to go to the Mega.
Looking at the mega layout images I see that I will not be able to plug in the ethernet and gps shields after the megamoto shields.
So I was thinking : Is there a "adaptor shield" that allows me to plug a "second" shield on the mega?
The way I see it is like a shield that plugs into the back end of the mega and has the same header layout as the Arduino. By means of wire I could select the pins to use (of course the 5 volt and analog are obvious but other pins may be customizable)
Does something like this exist? Is it possible? Someone interested in designing this?
Best regards
Jantje

PS Thinking in the same direction I feel one could overcome pin in compatibility problems with the Arduino shields. By having a board with male headers that fit into the Arduino that can be connected with soldering to female headers in the same layout as the Arduino. I assume that to do so the headers would have to shift to the sides. Making 2 "adaptor boars" one "adaptor board" to shift to the left and the second "adaptor board" to shift to the right would allow to use all the pins even with pin incompatible boards without creating a power of Piza.

[johnwasser]

The Ethernet shield uses SPI (4 pins) so it would be fairly easy to connect it with a few wires.  Instead of a GPS Shield you could use a serial GPS module and connect it to a serial port.  Even the motor shields might be better implemented as external motor controllers which generally use just two pins each.

Shields are very useful if you need only one.  Beyond that you get into al the problems of pin use conflicts.

[Jantje]

Hi John
I get your point but ....
I don't have an electronics background so when I hear SPI I go Whaaaat? Connect to serial port??? how???
With the shields supported with libraries I can easily get going. I have done some successful projects already. I guess that the shields are one of the things Arduino is popular for.
So I guess fixing the pin incompatibility problem is a good thing for Arduino. I'm pretty sure that it can be done with a double sided PCB with (at least 1, worst case 3) extra row(s) (or however this is called). I have however never designed a PCB, take away a double sided one which in my humble opinion I think is needed. When I read comments on board designs I don't feel comfortable about starting it  :~
I also have another reason why I prefer the shields to loosely connected boards. That is the fact that the shields cause a mechanical resistant towards movement between the boards, which makes assembling the electronics in a mobile device easier than a bunch of boards connected with wires.
I have taken the liberty of using ladyada's pcb to show what I'm thinking of.

Does something like this exist? Is it possible? Someone interested in designing this?
Best regards
Jantje

[justjed]

Somebody is. I just can't find the post. Paged through a few of the subforums, but no luck.

ETA: Spent some time searching, still coming up empty. IIRC, it was a prototype somebody announced around Sept. I think. Very short thread too.

[Jantje]

I searched and didn't find the post.
So I created a request to build this. I hope this will work out.
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,80806.0.html
Best regards
Jantje

[Jantje]

Good news.
I got a link to a board that fixes the incompatibility.
http://mayhewlabs.com/products/go-between-shield
It is called the go-inbetween Shield and can be bought at Sparkfun http://www.sparkfun.com/products/11002

Best regards
Jantje