i decided to build a small controller box (my first one) with some potentiometers, on/off switches etc., its gonna be sort of a footpedal for controlling max/msp. i have a metal box in which i put all the components but there's just little place for the ardunio and i dont wanna put it into there "forever", because i wanna use the arduino for other projects, too
i thought of putting the arduino in a small box, mounting a socket for whatever type of cable/connector to the box, and using the same sort of socket for all my future electronic tryouts. so that you dont have to remove the cables from the small arduino-pins everytime you want to connect a different device, you know... like you then know pin 1 of your connector is always 5v, pin 2 is always 3,3 v, pin 3 is ground etc.
my questions are:
first of all: is that a good idea? did you solve this differently?
and then: which kind of connector would you use? is thought of two types, the SCART and the SUB-D or D-SUB, SCART is 20-pin and SUB-D can be 25-pin, which is enough for my purposes
do you know of any better and smaller connector type for that? it should be as small as possible, but i'm not very good in soldering, so of course it should be able to handle for me concerning the size
are scart or sub-d okay concerning the shield? i mean im gonna put analog voltage (potentiometers) through this to the arduino analog-in pins, i have the ground going to ardunio, i have the 5v from the arduino, i have high/low voltage for digital-in pins etc. ... do any of those interfere with each other? i think with both connector/cable types there is an outer shield for all of the lines and there is no individual shield, is it?
so is it okay using like SCART?
You could use an arduino proto shield but it's very small though. If you want to pull your arduino out, you may either keep the shield with the project (wires are connected from the shield to everywhere on your project), or pull all wires from the shield.
I'm actually working on a design that will address this problem. It's being manufactured. I suggest you work on your breadboard first to get the project working before putting in inside a box. Maybe by that time I will be ready to present my solution. Right now it has a blank page:
First off I have used Dsub for varius connections and they do work. In your case I think they would be fine. They would also be easy to find at computer surpluses places. I have no opinion on SCART, have never used it. There are lots of other options too. There are some I have used for pro audio that cost more per end than a few Megas!
Some thing to consider is how much does the ends and cable cost vs the cost of a pro mini or stand alone.
tjbaudio:
Some thing to consider is how much does the ends and cable cost vs the cost of a pro mini or stand alone.
That's the question. Wouldn't you be better off designing the device with the Arduino, and then when it is ready and working replace the Arduino with a stand-alone microprocessor? You can buy an RBBB (Really Bare Bones Board) for a reasonable price. Probably less than you would pay for the stuff to plug your Arduino in and out.
now the shield thing looks like a solution but just if you experiment around at home... i want to use my controller live to change audio settings via the footswitches and to change parameters via the potentiometers, as a sort of midi controller, just without converting to midi first. so it has to be closed and it has to be robust somehow...and connected to the computer. a shield on the outside like that midi glockenspiel thing wouldnt work for me... and a shield on the inside would be too much of opening up the case every time etc.
i mean i thought of having one box with the arduino in it, and a jack to plug a connector into it for input/output
and then boxes with whatever inside i can plug into my box with the arduino then... yeah i think you understood already
the idea of putting in the mini arduino or another stand alone microcontroller into the controllerboxwould work, of course, but using SCART cables would actually be cheaper, plus i dont know anything about using other microcontrollers yet, plus: i have no connection to my laptop then!?
now maybe you would think of building a little circuit with the fitting code for the microcontroller to have it convert my actions into MIDI and give MIDI out of a mounted MIDI-socket into the sound card into my computer... but then i have no control over the LEDs via the software i would write for that in like max/msp, and the latency would get quite high because of MIDI, wouldnt it?
i mean converting stuff into MIDI, giving it out, having it running into the sound card etc. would not be faster than directly reading the pins in max/msp in realtime, or what do you think? and from max/msp i could set the LEDs, so that i could run through different scenes with stepping onto the footswitches and i would have an optical feedback for that via LEDs
d-sub would cost more, so...
does anybody know about SCART and putting variable voltage and ground and 5v and info for digital-reading through that into arduino etc.?
im just wondering if its okay for that, if nothing gets lost, if there are no negative interferences between the different wires in the scart cable, if the shield is good for that etc. etc.
does anybody know about SCART and putting variable voltage and ground and 5v and info for digital-reading through that into arduino etc.
A SCART is just a connector, there is nothing special about it. However, some cheap leads do not have wiring on all the connectors as in the standard configuration they are either not used or duplicate grounds.
if there are no negative interferences between the different wires in the scart cable,
I think you mean cross talk, there is always cross talk but for short distances and low frequencies this will not matter.