Anyone who enjoys building projects using the Arduino platform and the awesome Raspberry Pi mini PC, are sure to be interested in this new concept called the Bridge Shield.
The Bridge Shield is equipped with a number of useful features as well as the ability to combine the two platforms together into one handy device for development.
The new Shield has been designed to provide a common shield for Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno development boards with Motor Drivers, RTC, Temp, IR Sensors, IMU & 2 Cell 7.4 V Li-ion battery charger included.
“We often faced lot of issues with multiple voltage levels, too many adapters & regulators in almost all our projects.
We also realized that in many instance we do require some basic add on boards like RTC, Temperature sensor, IMU etc. Adding many add-on board clutters your board and makes it difficult to debug. Not just this you even need to take care of the mounting of these boards.
Our favourite boards, the Arduino Uno and Raspberry Pi are both required in most automation projects but there are cases where only one of them will do. The problem was that each of them have different shields and both of them operate at different voltage levels.
Many tinkerers use motors as actuators specially in a robotic application and in case your application is mobile it needs a battery along with it you also need a charging circuit so these addition keep on complicating the system with lot of wires and consumes lot of space. “
Bridge Shield features and specifications:
• 10 DOF IMU (Accelerometer, Gyro, Magneto, Baro).
• Two cell 7.4V Lithium Ion battery charger with led and signal pins to monitor battery charge status.
• RTC with coin cell backup provision.
• Open 5V-3.3V bidirectional voltage level converter.
• Level Shifting for SPI, I2C, UART between Arduino Uno & Raspberry Pi.
• Temperature Sensor.
• Dual Bridge motor driver which can drive motors up to 1Amp.
• 8 channel Servo Motor Diver which works on I2C.
• Attiny85 micro-controller loaded with Arduino boot loader.
• IR Sensor for wireless remote control.
• USB to UART converter.
• Single input source of 12V which power Pi and Arduino Uno.
• One variable voltage regulator of 3A.
• 5V/3A voltage regulator.
• 3.3V/1A voltage regulator.
• Intensity variable LED controlled through I2C.
• Header for ESP8266 Wi-Fi Module.
• Header for HC-05 Bluetooth Module.
• Its mechanical construction makes it compatible with most of the stack able Arduino Uno and Raspberry Pi shields.
For more information on the new Brifge Shield jump over to the Kickstarter website for details and to make a pledge from $81 to own one.
Source: Kickstarter
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