m00dawg
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Texas

I have been wanting to build an ArdunioBoy for a while and finally opted to go the route of making a shield first since it means I can reuse my Ardunio for other things if I want, and have a bit more room to experiment. I used shield template I think I found on Adafruit somewhere. Just sent the design off to DorkBot and will be able to test things in a few weeks hopefully. Until then, I thought I would share for anyone that might find it helpful.

Here is a pic of the board layout
Here are the EagleCAD files for it.

Not much to it, really. I extended the shield out a bit to make it easier to mess with the MIDI ports as I am a bit worried about clearance underneath the shield were I to move them in. The plan is to get this working and then make a custom board for the whole thing so I can better fit it in a case and things, but I thought this would be more more useful for me at the moment.

Feedback welcome! The thought occurred to me I should have asked for feedback /before/ or ordered the boards but oh well smile As long as the first board works, I'm happy and can make changes in a subsequent revision.

kitsch
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matt's mind

very cool, its about time this was tackled!

you can show images directly in your post with this bit of code: 

[img]Image URL[/img]

the only thing i would suggest glancing at it is a much more extended board with a prototyping area/breadboard place.  something along those lines.  but, thats just for my own nefarious purposes, it might be really annoying to other people.  then again, since this is a shield people may already anticipate a certain element of DIY-ness and benefit from some tinkering room

herr_prof
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Yea it would be awesome to have a sheild that you could say.. add cc pots to big_smile

m00dawg
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Texas

OOOOH damnit that's a very good idea! I haven't looked at the Ardunio stuff much (I'm more of a MidiBox guy when it comes to hardware stuffs) but it seems almost trivially easy to add that sort of stuff. Actually, even if ArduniBoy couldn't do it, MidiBox has multiple projects that can do that sort of thing although a nice compact all in one solution is for the win.

Until you just mentioned CCs, I hadn't put any thought into those options smile I think it will be better once I have the shield and mGB up and running but man now you have my gears turning!

kineticturtle
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Matthew Joseph Payne

nice work, keeping an eye on this for sure

m00dawg
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Texas

I've been rather bad about following these forums lately but I'll do my best to keep this updated! If not, the link I sent that points to my band's website should be updated once I get it up and running (the prototype - the knobs and stuff are for a bit later on down the road).

All the board layouts and stuff are free for the taking as well if you want to build/modify your own. I think Kitsch is working on an ArduinoBoy kit but no idea of the status.

thursdaycustoms
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Cleveland, OH

Very cool! I have an Arduino Uno and just have not gotten around to using it yet. This will make my life easier.

Trash80
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Los Angeles
herr_prof wrote:

Yea it would be awesome to have a sheild that you could say.. add cc pots to big_smile

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9595

wink

thursdaycustoms
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Cleveland, OH

I saw that awhile back actually. I wasn't sure how it would work as the description doesn't go into great detail.
But you could just solder up a link cable to it right?

liquidcalm
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Bristol
justinthursday wrote:

I saw that awhile back actually. I wasn't sure how it would work as the description doesn't go into great detail.
But you could just solder up a link cable to it right?

Totally. I used exactly that shield to build my Ardunioboy. So easy. Just get the link cable in place, flash the Ardunio and fix the LEDs.

m00dawg
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Texas

Yup looks like that would work, although how did you handle the LEDs (or did you just not bother using them)?

My custom shield is in the mail but has yet to arrive so I can't say much about mine yet. Mine's larger than the one pictured and faces the other way because I wasn't sure how much clearance I would have between boards for solder blobs. Seems like the above considers that a bit of a non-issue, which is good smile

herr_prof
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trash80 wrote:
herr_prof wrote:

Yea it would be awesome to have a sheild that you could say.. add cc pots to big_smile

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9595

wink

I mean with terminal tie offs.. and uh pots that dont suck ass.

Trash80
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Los Angeles
herr_prof wrote:

I mean with terminal tie offs.. and uh pots that dont suck ass.

Those pots are good. I have quite a few of them- and you can solder wires easily if you wanted panel mounted. But yeah the pots suck because there isn't enough horizontal space for knobs, pretty lame design but makes for a easy build.
I've used the other shield:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9598

To build this guy:

The through-holes on the bottom made it easy as cake for the LEDs. Pretty simple build if you remember to disable the optoisolator when flashing the arduino.

Trash80
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Los Angeles

Not to discourage this thread at all, I'm all for the idea! smile

liquidcalm
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Bristol

Yeah, I just soldered the Leds directly to the shield and grounded them at the right place. as Trash 80 says I'm all for a dedicated shield. Makes life easier at the end of the day.

m00dawg
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Texas
trash80 wrote:

Not to discourage this thread at all, I'm all for the idea! smile

Haha can't discourage me to design my own board - it's fun smile Didn't realize you used a shield though as from the pics it looked like one board to me. Maybe put a link to that guy up on your G.Code page as a suggestion?

I'm still likely going to end up making a fully custom board if all goes well just because it's fun and should be (if I do it right) fairly compact.