Sunday, 22 February 2015

Arduino Proto Shield even better!

Last blog post I introduced you to the Arduino Proto Shield, a great solution for Arduino development. Thanks to the extra prototyping areas with soldering pads I was able to even improve the functionality of the board!

This is what I added
  • extra male headers next to all I/O and power pins
  • added serial/I2C/IIC adapter board LCD1602 to be able to control the LCD+backlight with only 2 I/O-pins + LCD pin reassignment via jumpers (control + power + backlight)
  • DS1307 real time clock + 24C32 EEPROM-pcb
  • MCP23017 chip on free soldering pads under LCD display -> 16 extra I/O-ports!
  • buzzer on free soldering pads under LCD display
  • 6 extra Grove compatible IIC-connections (4 female + 2 male; next to buttons) for easy connection with the popular Grove brick modules
  • extra connection for external LCD backlight and buzzer control
This picture shows you the changes on the upper pcb side

This picture shows the changes on the pcb back side
To be able to optionally control the LCD backlight with an external PWM-signal to be able to dim the backlight, I chose to bring out the backlight control signal from the PCF8574 on the I2C LCD adapter board to an external jumper (more info on that topic in this blog post).

Below, you'll find some pictures on how the extra headers were mounted next to the LCD.





Thanks to these modifications the functionality of the board is really improved without any extra visible wiring (on the upper pcb side anyway ;-).
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3 comments:

  1. ermis31 March 2015 at 15:25

    Great modification, i have the same Arduino Proto Shield. Can you give us more detailed info and photos about your mod?

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    1. ErPie2 April 2015 at 19:07

      Hi Ermis, I put some extra pictures in the blog post. As you'll see, I used a few Arduido stacking headers which I bent in an angle of 90°. I kept the pins of the stacking headers long enough so that I'm still able to connect stuff to them on the PCB back side. On the upper PCB side I put normal female headers (also bent to 90°) into the stacking headers. (pictures are before the mounting of the MCP23017).

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  2. ermis2 April 2015 at 19:52

    Thanks Erik for the detailed photos, i will plan some improvements on my board based on your ideas very soon, i have order a collection of stacking headers and i have already assemble the additional power supply. Best regards, Greg

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