Arduino Mega Shield, IDC connections

Development Other Hardware Development
1

Thinking this must be out there some where
but can't find it.

have an Arduino Mega,

want to connect it to four other boards,
which if I stack the shields on top of each other makes an interesting / unreliable stack.

Is there a shield, is there any call for a shield,
that has a pile of say 16 way IDC connectors on it,
and every IO pin on the arduino connects to a / or more than one IDC cable.

The sort of thing I was thinking of was on the lines of say each cable
has Vin, +5 and 2 Gnd on it, 8 digital IO pins, 4 analog in or out pins,

that way there is only one shield stacked on the Arduino Mega,
and reliable ribbion cables comming off it,
to 'standard' boards, with the other end of the ribbion cable on.

any thoughts ?

please tell us there is an IDC shield out there some where,
I can see one that take 4 or 6 pin sockets, for sencors I think,

2

You may be at the point of designing your own shield. Not cheap but you get exactly what you want. ruggedcircuits.com designed a custom board for me. Should be showing up next week. They were pretty easy to work with and reasonably priced compared to others.

If you're more a DIY get Eagle PCB software, use the 2560 shield template and lay out your own. Have a PCB company like PCB Order make the PCB and then solder all the chips you need for yourself.

3

thanks

can /will do my own shield
but had to ask first ....

purchased stuff from rugged before, so will talk,
thanks

4

Something like this?

5

thanks

that looks rather nice,

What I've done for now, is a pair of wing boards, into ribbon cable with IDC connector at the end...

sort of works,

not least because I needed the mega shield,

but I'm goign to order one of these to give it a try out.

thanks