SensorPack PCBs arrived!

To make putting together the sensor breakout boards (for an SHT15 and SCP1000) and Arduino Fio easier, I used Eagle to design a simple circuit board, then used SparkFun’s great service, BatchPCB, to get the boards produced. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, especially liked that I could easily make a “barn shaped” board by just laying down the outline. Noticed two things I’ll change in the next revision that would make it more flexible to use. I noticed the board didn’t quite allow for direct soldering of a Fio to the breakout, I’d planned on using sockets, but if I alter the board just a tiny bit, you can also directly solder a Fio to the breakout. The other change will be in changing the original idea of which side the Fio goes on, or perhaps just putting a silkscreen for the resistor and LED on both sides.

I put a DTR jumper to digital pin 4, and lined up an appropriate hole in the breakout board. However, I’d designed this so that the Arduino Fio would have the XBee side facing towards the breakout, so you could easily get to the reset button.

But, in one of those “oh yeah” moments you get when you put things together, I realized the DTR pin on the Fio is blocked by the XBee itself in that orientation. I can still use the boards, but the silkscreen for the resistor and LED are on the side of the board I’ll have to mount the Fio on, if I want to use the breakout to jumper DTR. The pictures below use a Fio that I had put a jumper on directly already.

This makes the sensor pack nice and compact, really easy to hook up, and very easy to mount in a solar radiation shield. I added mounting holes, which I’m using to hang the board in the shield, so it doesn’t directly touch any of the sides, influencing the ambient temperature.

Here are all the parts needed to assemble a basic SensorPack:

And here it is assembled: