Tronixstuff has a review of “Magpie” Arduino Uno-compatible board from Little Bird Electronics:
Starting with the subject of this review – the “Magpie” board from Little Bird Electronics in Australia. It seems that a new Arduino-compatible board enters the market every week, thanks to the open-source nature of the platform and the availability of rapid manufacturing. However the Magpie isn’t just any old Arduino Uno knock-off, it has something which helps it stand out from the crowd – status LEDs on every digital and analogue I/O pin. You can see them between the stacking header sockets and the silk-screen labels.
Check out the video after the break.
From the original article
And if an I/O pin is left floating it may trigger the LED if the threshold voltage is exceeded at the gate. Therefore when using the Magpie it would be a good idea to set all the pins to LOW that aren’t required for your particular sketch.Wouldn’t it be good if they had a pulldown resistors so that this does not happen? Or will that not work? I am not entirely sure of this idea.
In theory, adding PD resistors would be a good idea. In practice though, there would be some applications where hard wired PDs or PUs could cause more problems than they solve. Setting LOW in software allows for more flexibility of the dev board.
Great idea! I like simple debugging
I was told that if you didn’t add a resistor to an LED, you would burn out the Arduino. Do these SMD LEDs work as resistors or did they add resistors to the pins? If I add resistors to the pins, will the SMD LEDs burn less bright?
There are 1k resistors between the LED cathode and the MOSFET drain
Now somebody please make some transparent shields… :)