Contact

Contact us by mailing shrimping.it@cefn.com via @ShrimpingIt on Twitter or the Facebook ShrimpingIt page. Call us on 07879414275 to discuss your needs.

If you’d like to buy kits, then email us with the list of what you want and we’ll raise it as a Paypal invoice, arrange a transfer, or if you’re in the North of England, we’ll meet up at a local maker event and you can pay us in beer.

19 Responses

  1. Martyn Jones
    Martyn Jones September 24, 2012 at 11:59 am | | Reply

    Hi

    I’m very interested in this project, but I find the website a little confusing. To those in the ‘Arduino’ know already, it may seem quite straightforward, but the rest of us may need a bit more help.

    I take it that the Shrimp is a low-cost Arduino programmer and that you can build it on a breadboard or a stripboard. The stripboard obviously needs to be cut in certain places, but I can’t find a diagram to show this – is it a simple cut below the chip? It seems to be programmed by USB, but I don’t understand how this is done – what exactly is the red circuit board in your diagrams and is this a ready made component you need to buy in addition? Where are the input and output connections on the diagrams?

    Also do you have a complete Shrimp project which includes making the board, programming the chip and connecting the sensors / devices etc? This would help in explaining what it’s all about and how to work with it.

    Finally, I’d let to get started making one of these, but some of the suppliers you quote are in the US – won’t that make it expensive to import? Or can you supply me with everything I need (including the USB board) and if so, at what cost please – I’d probably buy one from you.

    Thanks in advance for your help in illuminating me about this very interesting project.

    Martyn

    Sorry if I’m being dumb about some of these questions, but I’d really like to find out about it and get started with an Arduino project.

  2. Dominik Bach
    Dominik Bach October 15, 2012 at 1:18 pm | | Reply

    Hello,

    we’d like to know more about your project but i cannot clearly understand what the Shrimp is actually? Is it a kit or just a design-plan containing some sketches and a schematic? Do you have some more information, e.g. what parts need to be bought and what tools?

    Where could we also get more informations in german (we’re located in NRW, Germany) to fully understand what we need?

    Thank you and kind regards
    Dominik Bach

    1. admin
      admin October 16, 2012 at 4:07 pm | | Reply

      The aim is to try and ‘standardise’ a layout and set of components which enables educators to make Arduino-compatible circuits on breadboard and stripboard, and consolidate knowledge about how to do it, where to buy stuff, how to run a lesson with kids or adults to teach them, and how to proceed towards different experiments and projects (probably using the same common components and suppliers where possible).

      In practice I’m sharing kits of parts in my local area, but not exactly making this available as a kit in the sense of a commercial product. In the near term given the interest I’m getting, I need to be coordinating buying consortia around the world (e.g. when someone gets in touch from Germany, I would hope to suggest a local organisation who can help people through adopting the this technology-access approach, and maybe bulk-buying on behalf of several downstream groups).

      I’d be very interested to know how I could produce internationalised material to suit you. Making stuff which is illustration-heavy is probably a starting point, but some localised titles and text would be necessary I guess. Sorry not to be able to help you in German directly, although I have a collaborator who could maybe help.

  3. Michael
    Michael December 3, 2012 at 6:30 pm | | Reply

    I’m interested in using the design for a local school. It would immensely helpful if you could create a “wish list” or “cart” that we could click on that would be pre-populated with the correct parts, or if you provided the part numbers from just one of the sites you mention. thanks…this looks really fun.

    1. admin
      admin December 4, 2012 at 12:06 am | | Reply

      Fair point. It’s not super-easy finding the right bits and being confident of it. It’s an expensive mistake to make when you’ve got one component wrong and may need to mail order all over again. I’ll go through providing the numbers for Tayda at some stage soon.

      1. admin
        admin December 7, 2012 at 12:06 am | | Reply

        I’ve now added deep links to the items in the Tayda catalog, but keep track of how many of each component you need to buy. Some of them you need more than one of the same item as outlined in the Bill of Materials table!

  4. SDM
    SDM January 30, 2013 at 8:16 pm | | Reply

    I’m trying to test my Shrimp, but I constantly get the following error message when uploaden the blink script:
    avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00

    I’ve already changed com-ports.

    1. SDM
      SDM January 30, 2013 at 10:43 pm | | Reply

      I’ve found the problem. The chip wasn’t properly connected with my breadboard. Changing breadboard solved it.

  5. Frank
    Frank October 21, 2013 at 11:52 am | | Reply

    It was really exciting to meet you and hear you talk in such an open and accessible way. The site is fantastic, the boards are great and the way you personally articulate all that is beautiful about free software/hardware and the sharing of this has left me with nothing but enthusiam about where I can share myself! Codeclub at my son’s school could be the entry point ;0)

    1. admin
      admin October 21, 2013 at 12:34 pm | | Reply

      Thanks for the kind words, Frank. Let us know how we can help if you have projects in mind, or are hoping to teach yourself (classroom materials, other project layouts etc.).

  6. Sam Lubbe
    Sam Lubbe November 18, 2013 at 10:48 am | | Reply

    Hello,This looks really exciting, am I am to use the shrimp with Scratch using raspberry Pi and a desktop/laptop PC?

  7. Jack
    Jack December 2, 2013 at 10:06 am | | Reply

    I just want to make a quick recommendation for a cheap and enlightening (!) project for the shrimp; an RGB led mood light. Built of course from separate red, green and blue leds, and using folded paper as a cover/diffuser. There’s just such a project on instructables.com but I don’t have the link to hand.
    It’s simple, teaches colour mixing, and also PWM control of LED brightness. The only difficulty might be matching the resistors.

    1. admin
      admin December 16, 2013 at 8:16 pm | | Reply

      Thanks, Jack. We worked with this a bit during our ‘Live at Leeds’ workshops with the BBC. There we were using an RGB LED embedded inside a M.I.High Communicator pen to communicate secret messages, and in practice learning about PWM and color mixing.

  8. viktor
    viktor June 6, 2014 at 11:45 pm | | Reply

    Greetings from Berlin!
    I`ve tried to build the Shrimp with a new Atmega chip (from Conrad) and upload a blink example on it. I am using Ubuntu, and I get the the message:

    Using Port : /dev/ttyUSB0
    Using Programmer : arduino
    Overriding Baud Rate : 115200
    avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
    avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
    avrdude: Send: 0 [30] [20]
    avrdude: ser_recv(): programmer is not responding
    avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

    It ist possible that UART is not suitable? I bought it on eBay:
    http://www.ebay.de/itm/CP2102-Serial-Converter-USB-2-0-To-TTL-/231074304644?pt=Bauteile&hash=item35cd1a1284

    Does the microcontroller actually need a bootloader?

    Thank You!

    1. admin
      admin June 7, 2014 at 10:42 am | | Reply

      Hi, Viktor.

      Did you follow Blink, at http://shrimping.it/blog/blink/ ?

      Do you know if the ATMEGA chip has an Arduino bootloader already, or is it just a blank chip from a wholesaler? If it’s blank with no bootloader, then you will not be able to program it from Arduino IDE.

      However, if you can get hold of at least one chip with an Arduino bootloader, (or borrow an Arduino board) then you can put the bootloader onto other blank chips. See the page http://shrimping.it/blog/bill-of-materials/ and especially under the heading “Getting your first Shrimp working” where it describes using Optiloader.

      I’m pretty certain there won’t be a problem with the CP2102, as it’s a generic part, although different manufacturers sometimes change the sequence of pins and switch TX and RX labelling (so TX is actually labelled RX, and vice versa).

      If you just need one kit working to get started you could always order bits from us. Shipping one kit is £3.50 postage or a full set of kits is £5 postage anywhere in continental Europe, see http://shrimping.it/blog/kits/ but we’re happy to support you sourcing your own as well; it’s really good for community projects around the world to have the knowledge of sourcing cheaply for themselves!

  9. Søren
    Søren July 10, 2014 at 1:52 pm | | Reply

    Hello :-)

    I see in your schematic that you are using ATmega328-PU in your shrimp, but it is also possible to use ATmega328P-PU with the same result in the setup?

    Best regards

    Søren

    1. admin
      admin July 20, 2014 at 10:33 pm | | Reply

      Hi, Søren

      We use the two chips interchangeably, depending which one is cheaper, and if the P-PU is only a few pennies more, there are minor advantages in choosing it. The Optiloader bootloader routine works just the same for these chips too. Thanks for asking.

Leave a Reply to SDM Click here to cancel reply.