The White Bread Shield for Arduino is not only a prototyping shield for Arduino, but also an Arduino-compatible, prototyping board for your next stand-alone project. The White Bread Shield includes not only a prototyping area laid out like the typical breadboard, but also locations for the ATMEGA328 microcontroller and support components.
Here's the White Bread Shield as a shield.
Here's the White Bread Shield as a stand-alone project.
Of course, you can't have a White Bread Shield without a Wheat Bread Shield. The Wheat Bread Shield doubles the amount of prototyping area and routes the power/ground buses nearer the Arduino I/O pins. The Wheat Bread Shield is part of a couple stretch goals for the Kickstarter project.
I also want to thank all the backers and others who have offered their pledges and feedback to improve the board designs. I want these boards into as many hands as possible, see some great projects built, and make things a little easier for a few makers out there. I hope you will find these boards helpful.
Thank you. I'm grateful for the support and I've tried to offer rewards and stretch goals that reflect that. I appreciate how successful the Kickstarter has been so far and with the stretch goals, I'm hoping to get even more boards out there.
Nice, particularly the wheat bread shield if you get to 500 backers. You might think about having another reward level (perhaps $20) that gets the wheat bread shield instead of white bread, even if you don't get 500 backers.
One thing that I've wished for, but few boards support is a third power rail, that would allow easy access to either external power, or power at a different voltage level (3.3v vs. 5v). You can do it on a regular breadboard by not connecting the two red power rails, but I know if I go that way, sooner or later, I'm going to plug something into a red rail, and get the magic smoke released.
The SB400 and BR1 boards from Busboard Prototype systems (http://www.busboard.com/) are one of the few boards that has a 3rd power rail (but the SB400 IMHO has a problem that 2 of the 3 power rails are not a multiple of 0.1" so you can't use pins at regular spacing to bridge the connection).
MichaelMeissner,
I like the idea of adding the additional power bus. The little prototyping area in the lower left corner could be replaced with another voltage regulator circuit. I'll definitely be giving this consideration.
robtillaart,
I realize the international shipping seems a little high, but I estimated the shipping cost using the US Postal Service's First Class International rate for 12 ounces. This came out to between $14 and $15. To mitigate some of the shipping costs, I'm allowing backers to receive up to 10 boards for their pledge. If someone pledges at the $15 ($18) level, they can receive additional boards for an extra $5 ($6) each. There's been a number of backers who have taken advantage of this.
I wish I was so smooth. I did allow a little weight for including some freebies in the rewards packages, but I originally thought the freebies would be stickers, or keychains, or extra White Bread Shields. It wasn't until the launch of the KS that I started getting requests for more boards and KS told me it was against the rules to mention multiples on the project pages, but it was okay to work out basically anything one on one with backers.
With the help from the KS, I will offer these boards for sale in the future and a KS was my best chance to get lots of boards into many different hands. My plan at the end is to have boards for my website and to have sent out as many boards as possible through the KS. I'm hoping the stretch goals are going to help with that.
tinkineering:
I wish I was so smooth. I did allow a little weight for including some freebies in the rewards packages, but I originally thought the freebies would be stickers, or keychains, or extra White Bread Shields. It wasn't until the launch of the KS that I started getting requests for more boards and KS told me it was against the rules to mention multiples on the project pages, but it was okay to work out basically anything one on one with backers.
With the help from the KS, I will offer these boards for sale in the future and a KS was my best chance to get lots of boards into many different hands. My plan at the end is to have boards for my website and to have sent out as many boards as possible through the KS. I'm hoping the stretch goals are going to help with that.
Great!
So moving on what is the next new project you are going to take on?
Based on feedback so far, I've gotten requests for a couple items.
A through-hole Arduino board, basically the left end of the White Bread Shield.
Another bread shield for the due/mega Arduino boards. I don't think making it stand-alone will be possible, but a prototyping board could be.
A project I've had on my list for awhile is one I've dubbed the What's the Big I/O? Shield for Arduino. The board would include 16 configurable I/O circuits. The outputs would be a simple relay output to control any voltage you want. The inputs would be opto-isolated and configurable to any voltage: 5VDC, 24VDC, 120VAC, and 240VAC. Based on the project, you pick the components and configure the I/O as needed.
Arduino started out as thruhole - I've done a '1284P version of it, with pre-built FTDI modules onboard or offboard. Couple of SMD parts that have big pads and are easy to hand solder.
There are plenty of inexpensive relay modules available on e-bay, I can't see doing a board just for that. On the input side, its hard to imagine 24/120/240 as control signals; maybe just as inputs to monitor to see if they exist. 3.3V and 5V as control/interface signals will be way more prevalent.
