I am completely new to arduinos and shields and need them for a pretty big project. I need help verifying that the following shields will be compatible with the arduino mega 2560. Having done some research, I have been seeing that most shields are compatible but I need to be 100% certain that these are either compatible or need just a few pins redirected.
This will be used with an XBee 1mW Wire Antenna to connect to our computer and a Joystick Shield. I imagine these wouldn't be a problem but I'm throwing them in just in case
Our budget and time is limited for this project, so I can't go around buying what I just assume might work/be compatible and have it fail. We were originally going with using 2 Arduino UNOs but were suggested to look into the mega 2560 instead.
Any help would be appreciated, and if you could support your answers, that would be incredible.
Thank you so much!
If you connect the appropriate pin to the appropriate pin of the shield and you have a library to make it work it should be ok, check for library for the shield and the standard on the pinout, if is for arduino UNO is not sure that will work with arduino mega because of the pinout difference and maybe the functionalities of the micro-controller
if you're going to program it directly, you could attache with jumper cables or other conductive material the appropriate pins
It is nice and small and easy to connect, also because your planning on using more shields this might work better to get it connected to the few pins you have left.
All those will be fine with the Mega. The issue with Mega compatibility is with components that use hardware SPI communication. The hardware SPI pins are in a different place on the Mega than the other Arduino boards. Luckily those pins are also found on the ICSP header, which is in the same place on all the boards. So a well make shield with an SPI device will connect to the ICSP header, rather than the headers along the edge of the board.
The only device of concern for this is the SD card reader, which is SPI. However, you can see that shield does have a connection to the ICSP header so it will work fine with the Mega. I do think it would have been a good idea for Arduino to document the shield/board compatibility in the product page.
