I’ve decided it’s probably not a good plan to have all my modules and main board just sitting directly on my table, so I’m looking into a mounting board and accompanying hardware.
From what I’ve gathered, the gadgeteer mounting holes are 3mm wide and 5mm apart, and i think 10mm should be enough space between the board and the modules.
I just want to check that the products I’m getting should work before I purchase, since I’ve never really done much hardware purchasing before
That’s a great idea! 4/40 screws and nuts work great with Gadgeteer modules.
With 10mm spacers you might want screws longer than 1/2". Alternatively, you could use 1 or 2 nuts as spacers. 2 nuts is enough of a standoff for most modules.
Kerry - Ah good point - I’ll get 1" screws instead just to be safe (sadly they dont have anything in between)
devhammer - good advice - i was going to go for the smaller plates just from eyeballing it, but then decided to measure, and you’re right, definitely need the bigger one!
I picked up a few hundred of these great black allen head 4-40 screws off amazon.com for about the same price as the plain silver ones you’ll get at Lowe’s. I think they complement the Gadgeteer design well
I was thinking pretty much the same thing Tommy, and I’ve been looking for a larger board as well, but nothing yet. I wanted to get a small briefcase size case as I intend on having multiple mainboards and a buckets of modules (I’m well on my way), so a nice case to keep and organize everything is key. At the top of the case would be room for a project board (just smaller then the case) with my latest project on it. Now this would be really handy for doing presentations with as I could have the hardware all ready to go when I show up.
Now the other thing I’d love to have is a switchable USB cable (meaning an On/Off switch in the middle of it, nice if it would attach to the project board), so I don’t have to unplug all the time when adding/removing modules etc. Now of course this might already exist and I’ve just not found it yet, so if anyone has a site with such a device please let me know.
Also is there a recommended tool for detaching the cables etc, as being a male with large fingers, I worry that I’m going to disconnect more then the cable sometimes and that would be bad.
Wow there are tons of them, so I suspect, powered would be a nice feature and small enough to bolt onto the project board (now if there were only as many options for project boards).
Now, if we could just integrate it with Visual Studio so that it automatically turns it on & off when it can’t reboot the device after so many seconds…
I’m a little nervous about the power supply as I’m wondering if 5V/1A is enough for 7 USB ports. I’ve ask ThinkGeek about their switchable 7 port hub as it looks workable: http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/e2d2/
@ Duke, I like the look of that one. From the surface (and price?) it appears to be of higher quality. I suppose you could always add a higher amperage power supply to the others though if it proved to be insufficient. However, the odds of me ever powering 7 FEZs at once is highly unlikely. I sometimes work on two at once. I have another hub for all the other stuff. The switched one would just be for micros.
However, after browsing around over there I think my desk would not be complete without this one. I could add my own switches
