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.
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.
Thanks for your questions, Martyn. Glad you tweeted too as I’m not getting mail notifications of comments for some reason.
Yes, the #Shrimp provides a very cheap alternative to the Arduino Uno hobby microcontroller board, and is indistinguishable for many purposes, apart from its form factor and construction. For some projects, making a #Shrimp up from parts is more educational or more fun than buying a £20 Arduino as well as being cheaper. The diagram at http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/PinMapping shows you the relationship between the pins as they are named in an Arduino project, and the pins which break out of a #Shrimp.
To get started you’re best off getting 100 kits. I’m kidding, but that’s when the numbers start to cost in nicely, and that’s the sort of numbers I’m buying in before handing them on to people at cost. I can send one your way at cost if it helps. Do you have paypal? I’ll find out how much one kit costs to post if you send your address – basically it’ll be £3.05+P&P including the CP2102 (the red board). Email me at shrimping.it@cefn.com to discuss what you need.
You can prove your prototype circuit on a breadboard then prepare a stripboard with the same ‘row layout’ as your breadboard. That way the circuit will be identical. As you point out, a normal breadboard is separated into two halves so you need to replicate this with whatever stripboard you have. I’ve been using a stanley knife to score and snap stripboard oblongs of the right size, and then I split each stripboard in two by separating the copper rows down the middle beneath the chip by scoring a gap with the knife. This is hazardous. The correct tool to use to separate tracks is a Stripboard cutter like http://www.rapidonline.com/Tools-Equipment/Stripboard-Cutter-34-0600 – essentially a 4mm drill with a handle on it. Some believe a drill is better… http://www.instructables.com/id/Stripboard-track-cutter/
Many education organisations need proper invoices and can’t just send cash via paypal. For people in that situation, or who don’t want to pick bits up from me for any other reason, ordering bits via http://www.taydaelectronics.com/ is probably a good idea, with their cheap postage being slow but, so far, reliable. The only thing they don’t sell is the wire and the solderless breadboards, their 328P-PU chips are about £1 more expensive, but superior, to the 328-PU chips we use (see http://computerpr0n.com/2012/03/burning-arduino-bootrom-on-an-atmega328-pu/ for a brief comparison ).
If buying from Tayda, I suggest you buy a small copper stripboard (each which can be cut into three striboard shrimps of 11+12+11 columns respectively) and a 3xAA battery pack on top of the bits listed at http://shrimping.it/blog/bill-of-materials/ Those extras will cost around $0.85 dollars and means you can easily deploy your project when you’ve finished it.
Cheap breadboards like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10X-Mini-Solderless-Prototype-Breadboard-170-Tie-points-for-Arduino-Shield-/170848017392?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c755dbf0 are worth picking up for the prototyping stage of a project. Switch to Stripboard when you have everything working, and all the components and wire cut to length, laid out nicely and functioning on the mini breadboards, and all should be well.
The kits I give out have the ATMEGA chips pre-flashed and an extra pin soldered on to the CP2102, and are ready to go. If you get your own bits it’s non-trivial to begin with. You need to flash a ‘bootloader’ onto chips which you receive from the factory, which normally requires at least one functioning Arduino to follow an Optiloader routine like this http://www.3guys1laser.com/blog-burn-bootloader-blank-atmega328atmega328p-arduino-uno . Also the CP2102 USB to UART modules which you use to program a #Shrimp need an extra pin soldered into a hole marked DTR, (otherwise you need to manually reset them when programming them, which requires fine timing on the reset button just after the Arduino software stops compiling and starts uploading).
All told it’s probably easier to pick them up from me, as long as I have the patience to flash and solder the extra bits for people
I’ve given out about 100 already (to maybe 40 different people) but I’m not giving up yet. After a while if the interest keeps growing as it has so far, maybe I’ll have to add some kind of donation on top to cover for my time.
Hi Cefn,
I sent you an e-mail regarding an order for a Shrimp kit. Did you get it?
Martyn
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I’ve found the problem. The chip wasn’t properly connected with my breadboard. Changing breadboard solved it.
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)
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.).
Hello,This looks really exciting, am I am to use the shrimp with Scratch using raspberry Pi and a desktop/laptop PC?
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.
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.
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!
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!
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
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.