Fiverino News
- I have two built boards of version 16 and have been using those for testing various shield and other projects
- I need to upload the KiCAD files for version 13 to my Github account
- The board itself works for me rather well.
- The data line switch works nicely to free up pins D2 and D4 for normal use.
- This allow me to use both the Relay Shield and the LCD Keypad Shield
- I found I could use my USB-BUB FTDI Breakout to communicate with the Fiverino via
- Pins 1 & 2 (Hardware UART ie. normal Serial)
- Any 2 pins (via SoftwareSerial)
Shield Testing
Relay Shield
This is the Seeedstudio Relay Shield v2.0 that I picked up from Radio Shack.
This shield made me realize that the ICSP header was actually part of the standard footprint and that I had a problem fitting it on the the Fiverino. Here was the problem...
Fortunately I the Relay Shield did not actually USE the header... so I simply removed the passthrough header after some wrangling with a soldering iron and some solder wick. Unfortunately this would not always work. My two lastest shields.... an SD Card Shield and a TFT Touchscreen Shield appear to USE the ICSP Header.
SD Card Shield
TFT Touchscreen Shield
These two shield do not work with the Fiverino because of the use of the ICSP connector. So I will have to go back to work.
If you remember, Version 13 did include an ICSP header... but it was in the wrong place. Version 16 almost has enough room for the header... but then there is the wiring to think about. Which brings me to my next topic.
Adafruit Trinket Pro
This great little board is basically the Trinket sized up to the full ATMega328 processor like a full Arduino. What is of interest to me is the double-sized bootloader that supports normal serial programmiing via an FTDI interface (cable/board) as well as programming directly through as V-USB interface! Yes this is the same as the Metaboard/Fiverino!
The only significant differences I could see was
- Different PIN assignments for the USB data lines
- A double-sized bootloader
So what am I thinking?
Well if I use the Trinket Pro bootloader, I can get rid of the programming jumper. That is one less reason to put all the logic on the right side of the Fiverino. Could we move it back?
MISC News
I also went ahead and put together a simple RTC (Real-Time Clock) module for use with my boards.
It has made me think I would like to design a Fiverino-board compatible Data Logging Shield. It would probably be better to wait until I just make the Fiverino closer to true R3 compatibility.
