There’s nothing quite as annoying as duplicated effort. Having to jump through the same hoops over and over again is a perfect way to burn yourself out, and might even keep you from tackling the project that’s been floating around in the back of your mind. [Alain Mauer] found that he’d build enough Arduino gadgets that were similar enough he could save himself some time by creating a standardized piece of hardware that he can load his code du jour on.
He’s come to call this device the Arduino Nano QP (which stands for Quick Project), and now it’s part of the 2019 Hackaday Prize. [Alain] doesn’t promise that it’s the perfect fit for everything, but estimates around 85% of the simple Arduino projects that he’s come up with could be realized on QP. This is thanks to the screw terminals on the bottom of the device which let you easily hook up any hardware that’s not already on the board.
The QP board itself has the ubiquitous 16×2 character LCD display (complete with contrast control trimmer), seven tactile buttons arranged in a vaguely Game Boy style layout, and of course a spot to solder on your Arduino Nano. All of which is protected by a very slick laser cut acrylic case, complete with retained buttons and etched labels.
We’ve seen no shortage of handheld Arduino devices, but we have to admit, something about the utilitarian nature of this one has us intrigued. We wouldn’t mind having one of these laying around the lab next time we want to do a quick test.
this is great. Are eagle or other PCB files available?
Ziggy!
That’s same thing I thought of at first glance.
That is very good.
One thing to add would be a “standard” I2C connector.
Huh?!?
Dude, leave the mushrooms in the dirt next time.
He might be refering to the Sparfun qwiic or however its spelled conector which they are using now.
There are a number of things you could do with that AS IS that would make it a worthwhile project to carry around in your pocket. I want one!
Bus Pirate + Teensy 3.2 + analog and digital I/O (with buffers/protection) terminal blocks on a 9 x 7 cm PCB give me this. Except mine uses a 1604 display and has a mundane 3×4 keypad, and my case is aluminum and is very ugly.
Send it in so we can complain that it isn’t a hack. :)