As a project in High School, my friend and I are developing an Arduino breakout shield that simplifies connecting sensors, motors, etc. to the board.
On the board would be an LCD, a battery connection (so the ability to supply a second power rail), and various buses for different types of external hardware (motors, digital sensors, analog sensors, etc).
The motor bus would use the battery connection for power, and utilize a built in motor controller so that the user can just plug a two wire motor directly into the shield.
The other buses would be made up of three pin connections, to give the user ground, voltage, and a data connection.
Is there demand for this type of shield?
Let us know!
Like one of these but with an LCD?
Yes, it would be like those. However ours would have a built in LCD and motor controllers.
We also would have more "ports" instead of just naked pins.
I also forgot to add there would be a separate power rail, so you would have the ability to hook things up to a voltage you specify based on whatever you hook up to it.
I'd think you'd want 3 wire motor busses for Servos, Arduino control directly, and 4/5/6 wire busses for Stepper motors - need high current drivers, investigate different driver chips at Pololu.com for example.
Ports vs naked pins - like shift registers to drive 12V/higher current LED strings?
Port expanders to connect to more buttons, switches?
I2C and SPI interfaces to connect to those devices (GPS, SD card, RTCs)?