Comments on: Arduino – fix your pin spacing!

By: Albornoz

Albornoz — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 03:59:43 +0000

This shield serves as programmer for ATmega48/88/168 Arduino, ATtiny2313, ATtiny13, ATmega32?
One could add ATtiny13, ATmega32?

By: funlw65

funlw65 — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:36:54 +0000

Maybe is time for another version of Arduino. They did it every time when redesigned it better.

http://freejalduino.blogspot.com/2010/07/freejalduino-rework-is-ready.html

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:22:49 +0000

That is clever, too bad it means modifying the Arduino.

By: Luke Weston

Luke Weston — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:55:10 +0000

Here’s one possible solution that can help:

http://reindeerflotilla.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/a-nice-little-arduino-hack/

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Don’t quote me on this, but I think I heard Tom Igoe say that this was an honest mistake that was carried into the first production boards, and after shields started being developed there was no way to fix it without breaking backwards compatibility. I may be misremembering, but that certainly sounds like a plausible explanation to me!

You’re right about not being able to plug a shield in backwards, I never thought of it that way before… Well, maybe if you push hard enough.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:29:21 +0000

I heard that with the odd pin spacing, it’s impossible to plug in a shield backwards. Not sure if that was a “bug turned feature”, or if it was designed that way on purpose. I sincerely hope it’s not to discourage the use of home-brew protoboard shields, as that would be very disappointing.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:52:14 +0000

The best solution right now is probably to use a prototyping shield like this one:
http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17_21&products_id=55&sessid=5c35870e03849c3c65ca98babe8d6eaf

They are cheap enough to keep a couple on hand for various projects and they obviously have the right pin spacing so you don’t have to fuss with that stuff.

By: UziMonkey

UziMonkey — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:42:09 +0000

I’m currently trying to get around this. I think I’m just going to order a Seeeduino, which does this right and has 2 extra pins to boot. Either that or just bend the pins a bit to make it fit into a normal Arduino. This looks like an egregious oversight they should have fixed years ago before people started making shields. They could still fix it, and just make some kind of adapter for people using old shields on new boards. But for a board that’s supposed to be easy for hobbyists, this one little difference of 40 mils is a huge barrier.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:07:11 +0000

I am fairly new to the Arduino world, so take that in account when assessing if I am just full of it
I find that when people do things like this, we tend to think of it as a mistake. Could it have the *intention* to not allow us to easily piggy back here? Maybe it would take some ingenious and motivated individual to provide some creative workaround for this, or even come up with a functionally equivalent (and popular) knock off?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:37:57 +0000

At this point I think they are stuck now that so many people have created shields for the original pinout.

I hadn’t seen the iDuino before, it looks like a good alternative to the Boarduino.

By: salsa

salsa — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:04:18 +0000

Can’t figure out why they perpetuated the 160mm spacing to the Duemilanove– grr! iDuino all the way for me.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:37:37 +0000

Awesome! I’m glad you got the programmer working. I am planning to make a standalone version at some point.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 06:18:11 +0000

I agree totally. It makes making protoboard shields very difficult. I realised this when trying to make a lcd screen shield. I gave up 3/4 of the way through. fortunately i found your high voltage programmer and used my premade proto-shield and made the high voltage programmer in one day! Yeah, now that “useless” chip is saved.

But seriously, they should have thought about that…..

I will hopefully be able to make a robotics geared arduino platform for robots in the future.. I would like it to have multiple spaced shield compatible… compatible with “normal” shields, and even spaced protoboard ones. Maybe even support for those smaller bluetooth shields too…