The Anderson X-treme "Half-board" Project
Project Description
This project modifies the Anderson PICAXE 18X protoboard. Like the PICAXE 08M Anderson "Half-board project, this one cuts the protoboard in half and uses header pins to attach it to a solderless breadboard. This allows solderless prototyping.
Project Hardware Setup
The "Half-board" approach cuts the board in half (I used a Dremel with cutoff wheel) leaving the row of the prototype area adjacent to pins 10 - 18 of the PICAXE chip. A set of header pins is soldered in here. The unique thing is that I have routed the attachments to pins 1 - 9 to a header that is next to first header, so you have pins 1 - 18 in a row sequentially. The following picture shows how I cut the board in half and soldered in the header pins. Notice also that I have routed ground and V+ to headers that adjacent to pin 18, in effect being pins 19 and 20.
Here is the "Half-board" plugged into the bread board. Notice that the pins are inserted into the bread board so that rows 1 - 18 of the bread board match pins 1 - 18 of the PICAXE. Ground and V+ are in rows 19 and 20.
Project Software
Although the Anderson X-treme "Half-board" is software independent, I am going to combine software on here in several stages to show the versatility of the much larger PICAXE. This will also show how I integrate several existing programs into a larger project.