ButtonShield

I always used my blackberry as the starting point of how I think about modular, open source hardware. It’s got a screen (some have a touchscreen), a motherboard, battery, wireless communication and buttons.

Well, Touchscreen = TouchShield Slide , Motherboard = Arduino , Battery = Lithium Backpack , Wireless = Xbee , and…buttons with the Buttonshield.

So here it is… it’s a shield built for the Arduino profile that has 32 buttons on it. It has a mode A or B selector, so you can wire up two of these directly to an Arduino, a lot like the InputShield , and still have pins for the TouchShield.

And for everything you need to make your own “openberry”, check out the OpenBerry kit over here

Specs

• 32 key buttons
• 1 caps lock with dual LEDs
• 1 space bar
• Underglow LED
• 2 Operating Modes, A & B
• Fits squarely on top of Arduino
• Datasheet here

Media

Here’s a video showing what the ButtonShield looks like passing through values to the Arduino:

Made possible by the Open Source Hardware Bank