My plan for packaging it up is to make a little model house and put the LCD and indicator LEDs into the roof of the house such that the LCD display is at a 45 degree angle. I think this will work well for presentation.
The above is essentially the concept. I will build the above our of thin hobby plywood.
But how should I go about attaching it to the mega board?
Options:
A. Dangle wires from the ceiling and plug them into the mega board, just like when I am breadboarding. On the ceiling of the house I could glue the resistors there with epoxy. On the outside, I drill a hole for the LEDs and glue them in as well. No additional circuit boards needed. The wooden roof is the circuit board. The drawback, it's a little nasty under the covers.
For that shield, it looks like the header pins are connected to the holes next to them. If you solder the wires to those holes it will result in more reliable connections. I don't think that the second shield that you showed has those connections between headers and holes.
Make sure that you're wires are long enough. Nothing worse than wires coming loose when moving the roof while assembling.
Pin headers are used on the strip board because they are cheaper. Then these are connected to Female Dupoint shells with click in pre-crimped connector wires like this.
These come in various lengths. The picture shows the shortest length at 11cm.
I make all my prototype circuit boards, which is a lot of boards due to my magazine work in the MagPi, like this, and they are solid and reliable connections.
Are the external components just the LCD display, the LED's and the resistors for the LED's? It seems hardly worth having a PCB.
I would just use Dupont connectors like these:
To connect the resistor to the LED and the LED and resistor to the Arduino I would just use red IDC connectors like this:
Cut one end off of one of the Dupont wires and put it into the IDC. If the other end is male it goes right into the Arduino.
I hate soldering, if I find myself needing to do it I draft up a PCB prototype and send it to a service. It costs about $50 but the result is much more reliable.
Good point. I did that since I needed a resistor of a particular value so I found two that in parallel was close enough. But as you noted, I should have simply plugged them into the bread board.
I have to ask, why are you using a Mega in your final project?
Isn't this a job for a pro micro or Nano Classic? Much smaller and easier to incorporate.
Mmm... Well this is my first Arduino project, so I didn't want to constrain myself too much. I thought using an 8 bit processor was constraint enough. (Reminds me of coding back in the 90s.)
I also plan on adding more sensors for version 2 when I sensor up the back straight for a drag strip.
I need to contact several together especially for VCC and gnd. Strangely the above lack ling distance traces. To make longer traces, should I simply bridge solder? Or do I need to affix jumper to wires??
Look at @LarryD pics in post #8 for ideas.
I like using 28AWG solid hookup wire for low current runs such as below. It's easy to work with when using quality strippers.
I did that since I needed a resistor of a particular value so I found two that in parallel was close enough. But as you noted, I should have simply plugged them into the bread board.
(Reminds me of coding back in the 90s.)
