Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Arduino Experimenter Strips

What I call the Experimenter Strip is simply an 8” x 2.25” strip of perfboard with an Arduino and a breadboard mounted upon it. I have tried several methods of mounting the Arduino and the breadboard with different levels of success. The Arduino can be screwed down or simply rested upon the perfboard using its rubber feet. The breadboard has an adhesive back and this can be used, but once it is attached, it is not easy to remove. I have found that the blue poster putty works very well. It adheres well and is easily removed. I find myself using it more and more.
On the underside of the Experimenter Strips I have attached felt pads. Rubber pads also work. The pads have been cut in half on the top and bottom, and the two sides to make for a snugger fit into the Sensors Lab console. They also make nice feet when using the strips independent of the Sensors Lab console. The round pads are the original shape.

That’s a bit of the blue poster putty in the lower right corner.

Here is an Experimenter Strip with the Arduino fastened with screws. The breadboard is in preparation for LED experiments. It contains a 2 digit, seven-segment LED (scrounged from a digital answering machine), a 10 bar LED array, and a bi-color LED. The little 1/8 watt resistors were removed from the same digital answering machine. The speaker was also scrounged from a digital answering machine. Notice the red and black 5 volt and ground wires coming from the Arduino and attached to the breadboard.


This Experimenter Strip uses an Arduino with an Adafruit Proto Shield attached. The little circuit board at the right end is taken from a garage sale toy, made to digitally records short sounds.
The shield has been modified with the addition of a 5 socket header, (found at the left side of the mini breadboard, with the yellow numbers) designed to access components soldered on the shield circuit board. I used three components already part of the shield (red and green LEDs and a switch), and added the piezo and photo cell (with a 10K resistor). The second lead on each of these components goes to ground.


1 red LED

2 piezo buzzer

3 photo cell

4 push switch

5 green LED





No comments:

Post a Comment