Shields

I really enjoy laying out circuit boards so creating shields for CHIPINO is a lot of fun to me plus they can be instantly popular with users of Arduino as well. So here are a few of the shields I've created recently.

Demo Shield

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This was the first shield I created because I wanted a shield I could use with my books. There are many readers who are new to electronics so having to breadboard the circuit AND learn software can be a bit more difficult. So I designed the Demo Shield to offer the features I would use in an entry level book and I used it in my chipKIT book. I'm working on an updated version that replaces the jumpers (that can disconnect a feature) with solder pads to make it easier to build.

Battery Shield

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This was my first kickstarter project and it was a success. I found these small AAAA batteries and realized they were small enough in diameter to fit below an Arduino shield header. I also didn't like hanging a 9v battery off to the side of a CHIPINO module when I made the project portable. This was my answer. I'm working on a new design that monitors the voltage with an ADC pin.

This design is open sourced and you can get the full story and files at it's own page battery-shield.com. I really like the fact I can stack them on top of each other to get more power. This makes the portable CHIPINO device last longer.

Shield Adapter

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I actually do a lot of my design projects on a breadboard first so when I want to quickly connect a few LEDs and switch and maybe a speaker then being able to plug a Demo Shield into the breadboard makes it much faster to build the circuit. But the spacing of the pins on the shield prevent it from happening so I created the Shield Adapter. This was my second successful kickstarter project.

There are more details about this shield here.