2.8” TFT Touch Shield for Arduino

From the first time I laid eyes on this arduino shield, I was super impressed of the power of a small arduino.  Not only does this shield come with a  built in microSD card connection, but it controls a large touchscreen display as well. The display has a decent resolution and a touch sensitive screen that can detect a user’s finger given any location.

Simply plug is in and load up the library and then you’ve got yourself a working touch sensitive, large display arduino shield.

 

LCD Shield Kit w/ 16 x 2Character Display

Arduino builders often have trouble with LCD projects because they require so many pins. Using most of the pins means that the arduino would have far less components and abilities. This new LCD Shield Kit requires only 2 I2C pins on the Arduino and let’s the user control 3 backlights pins and 5 keypad pins. I really like this shield because it doesn’t need unnecessary wiring.

 

18-bit Color TFT Shield w/ microSD and Joystick

As I was browsing through the shields I realized I really liked the more visually stimulating shields. I liked the shields that enhanced image or character display a lot. For example, this 18-bit color tft shield allows the user to add a small colorful and bright display to any arduino. There is a microSD card slot and a 5-way joystick navigation switch included as well. I think these visual displays really show how the arduino is like a mini computer.

 

1. Music Instrument Shield

Since I have been working a lot with sound lately, this shield would be useful for my audio-based projects in the future. The strength of this shield is that it “contains two large tonebanks including various piano, woodwinds, brass, synth, SFX and percussion sounds” and is “capable of playing several tones simultaneously” – giving the artist a great degree of freedom. The cost is also reasonable given the shield’s versatility.

2. Voice Recognition Shield

The voice recognition shield would be an effective complement to the music instrument shield above. This can create an interface between the viewer and the work, and coupled with the music instrument shield, can produce an engaging interactive piece relating to the dialogue between man and machine.

3. Gameduino

As someone who is an avid appreciator of video games I find this ‘gameduino’ to be an interesting shield I may use for future projects. The slightly primitive graphics is reminiscent of old-school Game Boy video games, which gives the shield a sense of charm.

1. CMUcam

 

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10032

Made by CMU, this can be used to collect visual information from the surrounding, allowing the Arduino to detect changes in light, color, or motion.

 

2. VoiceBox Shield

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10661

With a sound synthesizer, we can generate voice, thus allowing the Arduino to speak. This can be very useful to communicate messages en masse.

 

3. TFT Shield

https://www.adafruit.com/products/802

We can display images via this shield, and with some modifications we can display text also. This allows for a wide range of outputs.

The first shield I found allows one to play relatively high-quality audio. In principle I mention this merely because I believe it might make for a nice feature in any kind of installation and is potentially one of the more useful shields out there. Don’t get me wrong: GPS shields seem like all kinds of useful. I just feel that audio is a larger part of our everyday lives.

And, of course, it comes with it’s own snazzy potentiometer.

 

Aand it comes with its own headphone jack! Who needs an iPod or a phone which plays music when you have one of these?

Of all the shields available, particularly those on adafruit, there was one which clearly stood out to all of us: the touchscreen.

Never mind that this is currently the hottest peice of technology on the market — although those people in the technical field are even looking beyond the realm of the 3D printer and touch screen technology is nothing new it remains an attractive feature. My reasons for appreciating this particular touchscreen also include that you can display full color pictures: It may not be the greatest piece of display technology ever invented, but this image combined with technology could serve a multitude of purposes. For example, it could serve as a low-end tablet alternative for running simple applications which might, for example, have an autistic child touching and dragging facial expressions and their descriptions. You could far more easily invite people to play with your installation without any fear of having them knock it over or restart your project or delete your code…. It is not worry free, it is simply less worrisome.

The third piece of technology which stood out to me was also a display of sorts. 

Now I realize that the most exciting-looking feature of this pretty little display is the fact that it too, features a range of colors… I chose this simply because I think having a display or any sort makes a device much more communicable. Why is it that all of our computers today run off of a Graphical User Interface? Because it is so much easier to understand. If an Arduino had just a tiny little screen it would feel much easier to communicate with, especially if it were set up for some kind of project and something stopped running or ran out of looping space and were to pop up on the Arduino, whoever was running the show would know what the problem was without finding someone to put in their username and password in order to revive their laptop and find out what the problem was that way…. given that this project was plugged in to a laptop, anyway.

One other exciting little feature about this is that it only uses two pins. There is another cheaper version ($~12 rather than $~23) but this uses more pins. In the name if efficacity and saving space, I hereby nominate this version.

(Additionally, you could also have this display something like, “I am an important piece of software as well as hardware! Please do not unplug me! To avoid further disasters. I feel like I was influenced by Professor Momeni’s “Do not unplug” policy for the Art Fab…)

 

 

Gameduino: “a game adapter for microcontrollers.” I’m interested in the sensors you can easily connect to the gameplay using Arduino, effectively rendering the old school-feel of the games produced from Gameduino into a fresh experience. Here’s another one related to gaming.

LCD Shield Kit: a space efficient LCD screen, taking up only a few pins as opposed to previous models. I like screen inputs that look very “digital” so I’m biased. I could see microcontroller easily asking for user inputs with this.

EasyVR shield: “a multi-purpose speech recognition module designed to add versatile, robust and cost effective speech and voice recognition capabilities to virtually any application.” Combine this with the previous two shields, and we’ve already got some interesting things going on. (Voice recognition as part of a multiplayer game mechanic?)

Arduino Wi-Fi Shield
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11287

This would definitely be an incredibly convenient addition to an arduino project just because wireless internet means less hassle over ethernet. Then again, I haven’t had much luck with CMU’s wireless… Anywho, this would be really useful for projects involving transmitting/receiving data from RSS Feeds or other sites on the web. Especially if the projects are meant to be portable!
(Too bad it’s a whopping $85…)

TFT Touch Screen for Arduino
https://www.adafruit.com/products/376

I’m impressed by the fact that this shield has a pretty high resolution and is also a touch screen. It’s a really useful interactive display and vastly expands what kind of data can be retrieved from the user’s interactions with the arduino. For example, it can measure the speed of tapping, or the position the finger slides to on the screen. Or it can just display some pretty flashy stuff.
(And again, a whopping $59…)

Data Logging Shield for Arduino
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1141

After seeing the cap on how large of a program you can put into an Arduino Uno, I’m thinking this shield would be the most reasonable choice for storing large amounts of data for projects that involve plotting or collecting data from a GPS shield or some other database. For example, if I did a project based on surveys from CMU students, I could use the data logging shield and then program the arduino to have some fancy visual output that lets the students see the results of the surveys.
(Less than $20!)

The touch shield allows for a tactile interactive color display surface on the arduino. This shield gives the possibility for small screen based operations that can have a dialogue with a larger/external work. My first thought was of making a personalized control board for a rocket or a creature. To use the shield, the viewer has to hold the arduino or put in on a nearby surface. I like this proximity feature and the intimacy it and its tactile nature provide.

The wave shield allows a project to have medium quality sound playback at varying volumes. This shield has emotional value to me as I have tried to use audio additions with arduino before, with no success. The shield only works with .wav files, which, as a Windows user, I find a pleasant surprise in a world of demanding mp3 or aiff files. This shield is also relatively cheap, and makes me excited to add audio depth and content to my electronic work.

Gameduino is an adapter/sort of shield for running games off of. It has nicer(but not great) graphics capabilities than a regular arduino, and comes with a VGA output and an output for stereo speakers. I was really drawn to the built in VGA, which would allow a project to incorporate a possible physical object related to the arduino and screen based graphics from a projector.

I like that these shields allow the electronics to be transformed from colorful chunks of metal to socially important artifacts. Even browsing the products gave me a sense of social concerns—especially with the attention given to data logging and GPS shields.

 

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1298

We see here a soil moisture and temperature sensor. It can be very useful in terms of gardening or farming, as it is able to measure to the habitability of a land. I  t is easy to see here a strong environmentalist message that can be conveyed with this very tool. Perhaps one could plant it all over the world and compare the health of soil between less inhabited places and cities.
https://www.adafruit.com/products/480

I can see a joystick like this adding a new dimension of interactivity and playfulness to any computer art piece. The joystick has loaded connotations, harking back to the arcades and Atari 2600 of the 70s and 80s, and reminds us of the innocent childlike concept of fun. Add a button to the setup, and you can have any interactive art piece play like a game of Pac-man.

https://www.adafruit.com/products/837

A more utilitarian approach to receiving input as opposed to the joystick. The standalone trackpad allows an art piece to be interactive without the method of input being too heavily loaded with connotation and distracting. In the spirit of being undistracting, having the trackpad out alone means the computer used to run the piece can be hidden, so the inner workings of the piece need not be revealed.