1Sheeld will replace 90-percent of your Arduino shields

1Sheeld is designed to replace many of the physical shields you use on an Arduino with virtual shields on your smartphone.

@CharlesJGantt

Published Nov 21, 2013 7:36 PM CST
Updated Nov 3, 2020 12:19 PM CST

1 minute & 19 seconds read time

It's no secret that I love development boards, and that I also love backing awesome projects I find on Kickstarter. Today I had the pleasure of being introduced to something that combines both of those things along side my philosophy of empowering everyone to become a maker.

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Early this morning a friend reminded me of a project I have briefly heard of a few weeks back. The 1Sheeld project was now on Kickstarter and it was already past its funding goal of $10,000 in just a few hours. The 1Sheeld is an ad-on board (or shield) for Arduino that allows you to connect your Android smartphone and access many different shields that have been recreated in digital form.

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Not only that, but 1Sheeld is able access your phones hardware and sensors such as the LCD Screen, Gyroscope, Switches, LEDs, Accelerometer, Magnetometer, GSM, Wi-Fi, GPS. This allows anyone with an Android phone, an Arduino, and a $50 1Sheeld to prototype and develop with a full range of hardware, without investing hundreds into physical shields.

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1Sheeld is easy to code for thanks to an extensive library its team has put together, and since everything will be released as open source technology, makers around the world will be able to modify the hardware, and even code hundreds if not thousands of new shields for it. Right now a pledge of $49 is all that is required to land you one of the coolest Arduino shields I have ever seen. Additional reward packages are available as well starting at just $1 and ranging to $239.

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I backed 1Sheeld because I truly feel that this type of shield for Arduino is going to change the way we look at development boards. Right now I have a workbench drawer that is literally filled with 45-50 shields for Ardino, chipKIT, BeagleBone, and more, and if I only had a 1Sheeld for each of those devices, I could free up an enormous amount of space!