The Arduino Family – Arduino Diecimilla (continued)

Posted August 20, 2008 * Comments(1)

In a previous post I reviewed the Arduino Diecimilla and some of its shields. The Diecimilla and its proto-shield provide us with a great sandbox for experimenting with basic circuits on a mini-breadboard. If you can leverage some of its shields to provide additional functionality you don’t want to have to implement yourself (GPS, SD card logging, Motor control, LCD, …) the Diecimilla ecosystem is a great set of building blocks for complex circuits.

But let’s back up for a second and explore what different use cases are:

  • Assemble existing components with some prototyping
  • Prototype using breadboards
  • Build semi permanent circuits
  • Build permanent circuits using perfboards
  • Build permanent circuits with custom PCB for small runs

Any others you can suggest ? Feel free to comment !

Arduino Diecimilla




Assemble and Play :
Breadboard Prototyping :
Semi-Permanent circuits :
Permanent Circuits :

Pros:

  • Multitude of shields available
  • ProtoShield for semi-permanent circuits (perfboard) or prototyping (breadboard)
  • Very well finished product
  • Diecimilla can be powered via USB or DC power (9V battery, wall wart, …)
  • Direct support in Arduino IDE

Cons:

  • Bigger than Boarduino, Stamp, Stickduino and Nano Arduino.
  • Multiple shields rarely stack up physically and are often incompatible as they use the same pins
  • Price: $35 (assembled)
  • Harder to embed than some into permanent projects
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1 Comment so far

  1. Roland on January 26th, 2009

    Using linux? Load your Arduino Diecimila with Simple Message System from the archives at arduino.cc, then get my package of shell scripts from http://user.cavenet.com/rolandl, called SMS1.tgz.
    This provides full IO & PWM control. AD is scaled to millivolts and CSV-formatted for import to most spreadsheets. GUI provided by xdialog command.

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