Introducing the Sensible Shield

So I’m sure anyone who’s ever tried to make their own arduino shield has been infuriated by the odd pin spacing on the Arduino Uno.  Especially if you try and do it with matrix/stripboard.  I figured it’d be easy enough and I could just bend the pins on each shield to make it fit, but after about an hour trying to do this I realised it was a silly idea.  There’s also the fact that shields block the reset button and all the LEDs (unless you look at a funny angle).

Introducing the Sensible Shield – it’s basically just a chunk of stripboard with thru-headers and the pins bent to fit, but on /this/ board the headers are in Sensible places.  So by stacking this in between the Arduino and other homemade shields, the other shields can have Sensible pin spacing.  There’re the other added bonus that a cleverly placed secondary reset button means it’s accessible with other shields on, and the lack of any components whatsoever means all clearance issues are basically eliminated.  So from now on making shields is quick (No need to etch/buy PCBs), cheap (You just need a small chunk of stripboard and some standard pin headers, no need to buy the proper long bendable ones, so a shield can be made for under a quid easily).

Pictures at http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~dwt27/arduino/sensible_shield and http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~dwt27/arduino/xy_shield (the latter is another simple shield with a dual 8bit SPI DAC and a couple of pots, used for controlling an XY oscilloscope and doing various things with the display, including an analog clock and pong clone).