Sometimes manufacturers will offer the shield as a kit or fully assembled – I often go for the fully assembled option just to save time. If you are buying from a reputable source, you should know this ahead of time, but it is worth double checking. Many shields are sold as kits, that means they are not fully assembled – and will require you to do some soldering. Two US companies that provide superb documentation of the shields they make and sell are Adafruit Industries and Sparkfun. But if you do a web search and it doesn’t turn up much of anything useful, you might consider looking for another option. Lucky for us, people who use Arduino tend to be awesome and do a great job writing about how to use stuff, so even if the manufacturer doesn’t have good instructions, if people actually use the shield, then you will find a wealth of information online. For all the ease of use that a shield provides, if I don’t know how to use it, it’s about as a good as a rock. This is one of the biggest factors for me when it comes to buying an Arduino shield. Buying an Arduino Shield? Think about this stuff:ĭocumentation is the fancy way of saying – “will they show me how to use this thing?” Basically, is there some type of tutorial or user manual or forum that talks about how to use the shield. The pins on a shield line up with the header rows on an Arduino and fit snuggly (more on this later). The black plastic rows of holes along the sides of an Arduino are called headers, and on the bottom of a shield, you have these long spiky pieces of metal, these are called pins. Shields plug right into the top of an Arduino. Chances are if you need to do something, a shield exists to get you up and running quick. There are shields for all types of things – LCD shields, LED matrix shields, wifi and bluetooth shields, motor shields, power supply shields, geiger counter shields, there are even shields for cooking hot dogs. These libraries allow you to easily implement the hardware features available on the shield. Now it’s not just the hardware that shields take care of, in many cases, Arduino shields also have programming libraries associated with them. This allows you to get your idea up and running fast. it can be pretty tricky especially if you are new to electronics and programming.Īrduino shields take all the complexity of the hardware and reduce it to a simple interface. But when you want to start adding all types of cool technologies like bluetooth, wifi, RF, motor-drivers, etc. Now the Arduino in and of itself is pretty amazing – you can do a lot of stuff with an Arduino alone. This tutorial will explain what Arduino Shields are, why they are awesome, and several things to consider when buying shields.Īs you may know, Arduino is designed for prototyping – it’s a platform for designing cool electronics ideas that you have. If you are learning about Arduino, you have no doubt come across the term Arduino Shield. These applications range from sensing, communication, social media, face recognition and many more exciting features.1Sheeld provides example code for every single one of their applications, which makes getting started possible in less than 20 minutes.Get 10 tips every new Arduino coder should know ➜ This shield plugs directly into an Arduino Uno and connects directly to your mobile phone via their app and allows you to play with over 40 different features. One of my personal favorites is the 1sheeld+ for iOS and Android. To show a few of our favorite shields currently available, it is also important to understand that shields can be very different in complexity, application, and capabilities. The real value of development board shields is that they make implementing components like motion detection and power distribution nearly immediate, because all of the hardware is ready to plug-and-play. Well, you will likely need to have a shield that enables motion detection and power distribution, all of which is controlled by the Arduino behind the scenes. Imagine you wanted to make a motion detecting light switch with an Arduino. The same holds true for development boards. Well, an athlete would have a very hard time skiing without the proper equipment like skis and cold-weather clothing. To bring back the analogy of the athlete, imagine you want to go skiing. Ultimately, shields make the design process extremely easy. What this means is that there is nearly unlimited possibility for designing just about any application you can dream up. As it stands, there are tens of thousands of available accessories for the top 3 development boards in the industry. One of the greatest things about shields is that you can find them for some of the most popular development boards in the industry, which makes prototyping much faster in the long run.
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