Timeline

(This tutorial has gotten really popular recently, and I’m very pleased that so many people are interested. I learned all of this stuff while working on my first PCB. If you’re interested, I’ve started to sell the most recent version of my Arduino ProtoShield. If you’re making a shield, have fun and good luck!. If not, I hope you find something useful here  -Aaron)

So you’re pretty fond of your Arduino. You make blinking lights, and beeping noises. You’ve made a robot that was pretty cool. Or maybe you didn’t. Who cares, You’re ready for the next step. You want to extend it. Although you can just plug in wires, there’s something very appealing about making a shield. Instead of a rats-nest of wires piled about and plugged into your prototyping breadboard, you can have a nice clean shield with labeled connections and a smaller footprint. So here I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to make a schematic and PCB layout, and get a beautiful shield that will plug into the top of your Arduino.

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