In my last post I described my Arduino Keyer Kludge. In that project I didn't use the standard "shield" board that normally sits atop the Arduino board. I had used a shield in an earlier project and I didn't really like it. I prefer to have all the electronics and connections on the top of the board -- this makes for easier experimentation and modification.
Above you can see my "sidecar" technique. I build the circuit on a piece of copper clad board using isolation pads superglued to the copper (aka "Manhattan style"). For the Arduino board, I just superglue a piece of balsa wood to the copper clad board, and attach the Arduino board to the balsa with small wood screws. Electrical connections from the Arduino to the sidecar just go from the Arduino pins to the appropriate points in the sidecar circuit via small-gauge wire.
Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20
Ah hah! Soon you will be using a plain Atmega chip without the Arduino PC Board!
ReplyDeleteThen comes using the chip's internal oscillator, reducing component count. Shortly following are Attiny chips, smaller and less power hungry for projects that don't need so many pins.
All the while you get to remain using the same Arduino software so you don't have to become a computer scientist.
Welcome to the dark side my friend! Or is this the light side? I dunno... Welcome to it though!