Plugs are not required to hook up to a JeeNode, of course. They just act as pre-wired components which can be combined and re-used at will.
Here’s a more Ardino’ish shield-like approach, the Proto Board:
It doesn’t have any wiring, just plated-through holes to allow components and connectors to be soldered to either side. The rectangle on the left matches the SPI/ISP header below, while the rectangle on the right matches… an upcoming modification of the PWR/I2C connector.
The board is slightly asymmetric, i.e. larger by 0.1″ on one side than the other. Note that due to the way port headers are aligned, plugging this board the wrong way around has no effect other than re-arranging port numbers. No risk of shorts or wrong voltages on any of the pins.
Here’s another way to plug two of these boards in, if the port numbers printed on the board are ignored:
That’s about as much real-estate we can get from generic plugs. For larger projects I use standard perf board with copper islands and push the JeeNode upside down onto it i.s.o. the other way around.
They look too beautiful to solder anything on them.
in which factory do you order this beautiful boards? they are realy nice looking.
I’m still trying out different places – see http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html for a good list of options.
The boards are really quite simple: blue solder mask and gold-immersion plating. But yeah, I like ’em very much that way myself, too! :)