Intel Edison generic calculator shield photo journal

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Greetings, I hope everyone has enjoyed a pleasant palm Sunday... I am discovering that more than one prototyping option needs to be considered while working with the Edison. For instance, the Edison supports 12 bit analog inputs with the readAnalogResolution() routine; however, the Edison itself, nor the mini breakout board, contains the actual ADC block hardware ( TI ADS7951 or equivalent). In production this chip is easily added. From a prototyping standpoint there are two options: 1) the Arduino breakout kit for the Edison, or 2) the Sparkfun ADC breakout board for and Edison. An Edison ADC is also available for 'the stack'.

A GPIO base board is also available to support the edison stack while prototyping, from Sparkfun.

I have also discovered that while the Quark MCU is powerful and flexible, often it is desirable to have a dedicated MCU on the the board like an Atmega328; to handle exclusively display and keyboard I|O, while the Edison's Quark is free for data gathering, and the Atom(s) are free for analytics. Things to think about.

I am also rethinking Matthias' keyboard suggestion... a more conventional approach with multiplexed | decoded scan lines and input lines on a diode matrix (seven rather than 5) may be actually simpler, all things considered; still researching.

Cheers,
marcus