The new USB Power Shield boards (rev. 2.0) have just arrived from BatchPCB! As always, they were quick, great quality, and they even sent me a few extra! Awesome service. Version 2.0 has some major revisions since v1.0, including: Smaller Size – cost is determined by size, so I brought it down to the bare [...]
Just in time to test the USB Power Shield, it’s a Woot-off! I’ll post some pics of the lights in action tomorrow, but for now, head over to the Woot Tracker to keep up with all the items.
So you have a USB Power Shield (or anything that uses a latching relay). How do you control it in an Arduino Sketch? Normal relays are pretty simple – supply voltage/current to the coil and it generates a magnetic field, which pushes the switch to the ON position. You only need one pin to run [...]
A special envelope arrived yesterday from BatchPCB – the envelope containing the prototype board for the USB Power Shield v1.0. Or should I say prototype boards – they were kind enough to produce two, even though I only ordered one. Consider me a happy customer, especially because the boards work. That’s right, the very first [...]
Things have been quite here lately – but think of it as the lull before the storm! Coming soon to a blog near you: USB Power Shield Prototype The PCB has finally been produced and is on the way. Expect to see a fully functional (*fingers crossed*) version in the next few days! If the [...]
After toying with the relays and Arduino I found that the diodes weren’t necessary – especially since the relay is latching, and current will be flowing both ways, so putting a diode in each direction would just create a short. As such, I made some modifications to the board and put it into Gerber files [...]
The arduino USB Power Shield has moved over to a relay design, to eliminate the voltage drop the transistors would have caused. Ports has dropped to two because a) no one needs to control four 5V devices, and b) the relays are latching and need two pins each. The board isn’t done – I’ve ordered [...]
I really wanted there to be a complete solution for the Woot-Off lights project that could be almost plug and play for the end user, so today I drew up a schematic and a board for a USB Power Shield for the Arduino. It pops onto the Arduino like any other shield, and by controlling [...]
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