2019-03-31 (Su) Electronic Wind Chimes EWC

Rather than solder directly to another board, a protoshield was purchased which acts like a typical Arduino shield except that it has no components mounted to it, it only provides mounting places for user components. In this case, it will be used to connect some parts and allow all the connections to be soldered in place without modifying a board. The last Arduino clone had issues, and this would enable troublesome hardware to be swapped out quickly.

Arduino MEGA protoshield with soldered headers

The protoshield was mounted to the plastic sheet but needed clearance for the wires. Standoffs and knurled bolts were chosen to keep the shield in place and maintain a neat look.

Knurled bolts

The knurled bolts installed from the outside of the plastic and the ridges provided traction in the plastic while the threaded standoffs were turned from below. These knurled bolts had no driving mechanism on their face, so they left a minimal impact on the look from the outside.

Standoffs and bolts in plastic

Soldering on the protoshield began for the main module. This meant more work than the next ones since certain provisions had to be started which would impact everything. For example, all the LCD monitors share five data lines so jumpers were installed which would allow all the wires to connect to a single Arduino pin.

Expansion wires for LCD connections

Wires from the primary module were banded together with zip ties to keep things looking neat. Two bundles came from the first section, one group for the power and LCD and a second group for the operators like switches and potentiometers.

Tidy wires

Everything was connected from the primary module to the protoshield. Supporting hardware still needs to be installed for reading an incoming MIDI signal. The standoffs provided more than enough room for the wires to mount between the shield and plastic face. As more wires are added, this could still become cramped.

Soldered connections on the first module

The rest of the posts for this project have been arranged by date.

First time here?

Completed projects from year 1
Completed projects from year 2
Completed projects from year 3
Completed projects from year 4
Completed projects from year 5

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2019-03-19