Arduino Centipede Shield (64 General-Purpose Digital I/O)
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The Centipede Shield is an add-on PCB for standard layout (Duemilanova, Diecimila) Arduino microcontroller boards. It uses the Wire I2C interface on analog pins 4 and 5 to provide 64 general purpose I/O pins.
This means that each pin can be assigned as an input or output, just like the standard digital pins on the Arduino. A library is provided that makes it easy to access the pins from Arduino code. The library commands are extremely similar to the existing pinMode, digitalWrite and digitalRead commands.
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The Centipede Shield is just good old true bidirectional I/O ... The Centipede Shield is useless for analog and in fact steals two of the Arduino's analog inputs ... The Centipede Shield is fire and forget, no multiplexing or strobing. It's more like a row of shift registers, except you can set input pins and software pullups and do interrupts on a pin change, etc.
[PCB Prototyping] Green 2 Layer 5cm*5cm max -10pcs ($12.00)
This service provides you 10pcs PCBs.
Layers: 2 Layers Size: smaller than 5cm*5cm*1.6mm (0.8mm/1.0mm/1.2mm) Default Thickness: 1.6mm (please contact us if you need 0.8mm, 1.0mm, 1.2mm) Mask: Green Silk Screen: Black
E-TEST
- Test 5 pieces by default, tested PCB will have a mark on the PCB edge. - 100% e-test optional for extra 10$ , you can purchase it here.
PCB design tips
- Single design, no panelizing - Drills line and long slot can’t be accepted - Minimum slot 1mm*1mm - DRC compatible as rule file attached - The PCB size is smallest rectangle that can accommodate PC
You can connect a momentary switch to the desired contact (Play or Skip button contact) as a replacement for the conductive material in the bottom end of the rubber button.
When the switch is press / pushed / pull and its two poles connected, it will do the same thing as if the rubber button was push against the PCB contact.
Checking the manufacturer's website can reveal what type of IR protocol the stereo uses.
The IR Toy is an IR receiver / transmitter, so it could theoretically be used with any remote control, and then have it send the proper codes to the stereo, but it complicates things as you also need a PC to accomplish this.
So the easiest way would be to determine what IR signal the stereo requires and start from there.
EDIT: Some time ago, I suggested a "stored codes" feature to allow the sending of specific codes without the intervention of PC software. If it is implemented in the firmware you could theoretically set: Signal A == (triggers) ==> Code B.
The rest of the comparison between LPC134x shows similar peripherals to the Arduino’s on chip. They both have I2C, SPI and USART. So overall the LPC134x looks as good or better than comparably priced ATmega’s (at one-off prices).
There is a free, Open Source, GNU toolchain for the ARM, which is based on the same compiler as the Arduino IDE uses. So it looks like there are no real obstacles to making a lower-cost, ARM-based Arduino alternative. Of course, there is a plenty of work in porting the Arduino language libraries, like analogRead and analogWrite, but the core functions, which we use the most, would probably be only a few weeks.
Using USB on the LPC1300 - As Simple as Using a UART (PDF)
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Looking at this presentation, (slide 25), the chip shows up under Windows (and they say Linux) as a Flash drive to provide “Drag and Drop Flashingâ€. It has this capability built in at manufacture! No need for a bootloader, JTAG, or a second chip, like the FTDI USB to serial interface on an Arduino. Put an LPC134x on a board, connect USB, and it should ‘just work’ !
An entire USB-based micro-controller board only needs an LPC1342 or LPC1343, a crystal, voltage regulator, a few passives and PCB.
How to access arduino, a lot of the competitors to arduino have visual programming (for instance Flowal). Here are the three visual programming languages I know of for the arduino.
Modkit is an in-browser graphical programming environment for little devices called embedded systems. Modkit can currently program Arduino and Arduino compatible hardware using simple graphical blocks similar to and heavily inspired by the Scratch programming environment developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.
Much of the efficiency gains comes from addressing some of the key design deficiencies of the Arduino runtime - we do not store pin/port information in tables in flash, needlessly preallocate objects nor dictate that excessively large buffers must be used. Instead, control of these are handed over to the developer at compile time. Our design philosophy is simple - whereas the Arduino trades off efficiency for ease of use, we are targetting experienced developers who want more from their systems, so we trade off ease of use for efficiency.
Whats Implemented:
- Digital I/O - Timers - Serial - External Interrupts - Servo control - Analogue to digital - Hardware PWM - Software PWM Matrix (for passive LED matrices) - Gamma correction - calculate on the fly, or lookup tables (recommended) - Fast synchronous serial shifter (untested) - Software H Bridge for driving naked transistors (with PWM support) - Realtime Clock
To Do:
- Optimise servo library - Add interrupt declarations for all microcontrollers - Input Capture for timers - Power Saving - A/D Triggers - SPI - Documentation - Full functionality of the Arduino runtime
