Arduino Uno SMD with 8 ADC pins instead of 6

Community Suggestions for the Arduino Project
1

I just needed 8 ADC input pins for an "Arduino Uno SMD" project but it has only six pins (A0-A5). Then I recalled that the used "Atmel Mega328P MU" has 32 pins instead of the 28 pins of the PDIP package.

Two of these additional 4 pins are a pair of GND and VCC pins. But the other two pins are "ADC6" and "ADC7". And it turned out that it is possible (but really really hard!) to solder thin wires to these pins and make them available to my project.

I glued round IC socket contacts to the area of the printed circuit board where only a large ground plane is.

And now I wonder why the new Arduino revision doesn't get two extra soldering pads to make this modification easier, or even to spend two additional connectors, somewhere where they don't interfer with all the shields?

ArduinoUnoSMDwith8ADCpins.jpg
ArduinoUnoSMDwith8ADCpins.jpg800×600 198 KB

2

Too bad you don't have the version (R3?) of the Arduino SMD that has the dual footprint. It would have been a lot easier!

3

You're absolutely right! Wish I had had the old revision, but I started Arduino with the SMD revision 3 and had no idea of anything, especially not that there are 8 ADC input pins at the mega328P MU.

Anyway, what I would like to see for the "UNO SMD revision 4" is at least two solder pads but hopefully two additional connectors.

That's my suggestion to make this product even better.