Alert: Danger Shield Away!

One of my side projects I’ve been working on lately is a fully self-contained Arduino shield. I originally started making it for the arduino classes i’m teaching. Today, I finished up the design and did a sanity-check prototype by printing out the board on paper, putting it on foam, and sticking the major components into it.

The board itself is a whole bunch of cool inputs and outputs. It has 3 sliders (with integrated LED’s… each connected to PWM). It has a temperature sensor, a light sensor, and a piezo wired as a knock sensor. It has 3 buttons, 2 PWM leds, a 7 segment led hooked up via a shift register, and a piezo buzzer. I set out to max out every Arduino pin, and I did it! I ordered the boards today, and I’m getting super psyched about it. Not only will this be a fun board to learn on, but I’m excited about using it to do all sorts of fun stuff. The possibilities are really off the charts.

The manufacturer now has my design. More pix on flickr.