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

The ButtonShield is 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 display.

Here is the ButtonShield Module:

Here is an example of how to mount the ButtonShield onto an Arduino using a DoubleWide ExtenderShield. The DoubleWide ExtenderShield allows the TouchShield Slide display, Lithium Backpack, and ButtonShield to be added to form a more complex gadget.

ButtonShield with a DoubleWide ExtenderShield

The ButtonShield uses five Arduino digital pins to report back the currently pressed key. The five pins are interpreted as binary, corresponding to the following decimal values,

ButtonShield return codes in Mode A

The ButtonShield has a Lock button with LED. When the Lock button is pressed, the LED is lit and the values of the keys change, similar to the caps lock button on a standard keyboard. Here are the Lock key values:

ButtonShield return codes in Mode B

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

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

Resources

• Datasheet here