Anyone thought about a "naked" shield?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Development
1

I've been soldering up one-off shields to make more robust prototypes I could carry around and test in real environments. What I've discovered is that the layout of the common proto-shields is taking a lot of real estate and forcing me to cram my (odd-ball) components in weird corners, cut traces, and so forth. And straight perf is a pain to work with, what with the offset Arduino pins and all.

So I was thinking; a proto-shield that had no preset surface components at all. No power LED, no carry-through of reset button; just the I/O headers (including unregulated source and reset pin), and V+ and ground bus along one edge. Plated holes only -- maybe those square pads designed for solder bridging.

Any thoughts? Anything like this out there already?

2

I sort of went the opposite direction - I tend to etch a custom board in the garage (press-n-peel/iron/HCl-H2O2) because it's no more trouble than figuring out how to get the stuff connected correctly on a typical protoboard.

-j

3

Is this the sort of thing you were thinking of ?

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/card

4

Naw. But I wouldn't mind having a few of those around, too! (Only soldered on AVR target board so far, and I'm already tired of it.)

My thought was specifically shield; a board to fit on top of the current standard Arduino pinout (giving you all that bootloading USB goodness) but that didn't force you into particular patterns of components.

5

I saw this on this morning, is this closer to what you are after ?

http://www.protoduino.com/

6

Something like this is mention to be under development at Modern Device according to the forum.

See this link for details
http://www.moderndevice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41

7

I must be speaking Greek.

These are all good ideas, and there is much attraction in a minimal Arduino-clone with a prototyping area that all fits on one board.

None of them fit the definition of "Shield," however. That's a different subject -- perhaps for a different thread!

8

You mean like this or this but probably not this?

The Sparkfun appears to be what you want - a bunch of PTH with the basic connector at the edges. The LadyAda version is a mix, and the NKC version is a "stripboard" type. That's my personal favorite for a protoshield, as I really dislike the "bunch of PTH" type of prototyping board.

-j

PTH == plated through-holes

9

Yah. Like those. I've got one of Lady Ada's boards but the NKC is closest to my needs. Still restrictive as to the components you can put on it, but a little less wasted real estate. I think I just bought my third one!

Lately I've been moving away from including a whole Arduino in an imbedded project, but it is still great for prototyping. And for that, the most open design of a shield possible is optimal. Hey....maybe I should lay out one myself in Eagle and see if there's enough interest to get a few run off?

10

Why not get a seeeduino clone which has an extra row of headers on a 0.1" grid, then you can use standard perfboard as your shield.