Blinkenlighty Layout

The layout of the Blinkenlighty board offers some cool features that are not available for standard Arduinos. The upper row of connectors got a duplicate row of pin holes. As you can see the left pins of the duplicate row are somwhat offset. This is because they match the standard grid. Thus if you solder connectors into them you can use standard boards to plug into this board. No need to go for strange adapters.

If you look more closely you can see that the duplicate (upper left) row contains to additional connections. These are for the A6 and A7 pin that is not available for the standard Arduino.

On the right side you can see the placement of the reset switch. It was shifted to the boarder of the board. This it can be reached even if there is a shield plugged into it.

Last but not least have a look at the crystal oscillator design. There are large ground planes shielding the oscillator. This improves clock stability. Unlike most other Arduino designs I put a significant amount of effort into keeping the oscillator circuit clear of any signal traces.

Last but not least there are the integrated Blinkenlights mounted at the back. This is what makes the Blinkenlighty really shine 🙂