Product Update Annoucement – Digilent Pmod Shield Rev B

We’ve made some improvements to our Pmod Shield! 

Description

The Digilent Pmod Shield Rev B (formerly the chipKIT Pmod Shield) is an adapter board from Uno R3 shield connector form factor to Pmod. By plugging the Pmod Shield into a base board with Uno R3 style headers, you can break out the header signals to Pmod ports for easy plugging in of Pmods.

From wire chaos to wire cleanliness!

Differences between Rev A and Rev B

The Digilent Pmod Shield Rev B is now even easier to use: We’ve simplified the jumper selections, cleaned up the silk screen, removed the four user LEDs (that it turned out no one really used), and replaced the jumpers JP6 and JP8 with optionally loadable headers (now JP1 and JP2 on Rev B). By making these jumpers optional, the Pmod Shield is now physically compatible with a wider range of base boards. The pinout has remained the same, however the physical locations of a few of the Pmod ports on the board have shifted. The same shield header pins are broken out to the same Pmod ports on Rev A and Rev B.

Pmod Shield Rev A on the left and Rev B on the right.

Compatibility

The Digilent Pmod Shield was originally designed for use with Digilent base boards, and works best with these boards. It is now compatible with three of our MCU boards including the uC32, WF32 and Wi-FIRE, two of our FPGA boards including the Arty A7 and upcoming Arty S7, and two of our Zynq boards including the PYNQ Z1 board and Arty Z7.

Digilent Pmod shield plugged into the Arty Z7 plus the Arty Z7 Pmod Pack.

The Digilent Pmod Shield will also be physically compatible with any base board that has Uno R3 style headers, however electrical compatibility with Pmod modules will depend on the pinout of the base board. For example, if the Pmod shield is used with the common Arduino Uno Pmod headers JB and JC will work with Pmods plugged directly in, and headers JD and JE provide some signals for use with wires. The table below shows communication protocol compatibility based on Pmod Shield port# vs. base board. All Pmods and protocols will work with our FPGA and Zynq boards.

  WF32 Wi-FIRE uC32 Arduino Uno
JA GPIO GPIO GPIO NA
JB UART (minus CTS and RTS), GPIO UART (minus CTS and RTS), GPIO SPI, UART, GPIO UART (top row only)
JC GPIO, SPI, UART (minus CTS and RTS) SPI, GPIO GPIO, SPI SPI (top row only), GPIO (top row only)
JD GPIO, UART (minus CTS and RTS) GPIO, UART (minus CTS and RTS) UART, GPIO, I2C (top row only) Extra signals for use with wires.
JE GPIO GPIO GPIO Extra signals for use with wires.

Compatibility table.

Applications

The Digilent Pmod Shield is designed to make adding sensors and additional functionality to your designs faster and easier by taking away the need for messy wiring. As stated above, the Digilent Pmod Shield works best with Digilent boards, but can also be useful for de-cluttering designs with Arduino Uno boards, or other boards that use Uno R3 style headers.

If using with Digilent MCU boards, it’s important to know that we now have the Digilent Core for Arduino. You can program your uC32, WF32 or Wi-FIRE plus Pmod Shield directly in the Arduino IDE. For more information on the Digilent Core for Arduino, see our tutorial here. For more details on the Digilent Pmod Shield Rev B, visit its Resource Center.

Please post below with any questions or comments or visit the add-on board section of the Digilent Forum!

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