Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino – NOW SHIPPING

Datalogshield Lrg
Bigsnack T
We “soft launched” the Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino during our weekly “Ask an engineer” show – the product is complete, we’re just wrapping up the documentation odds-and-ends, if you’re cool with that – order away. We think this is going to be a great shield for all Arduino owners and we think this is the best solution out there for all your Arduino data logging needs!

We’ve had a lot of people looking for a dedicated and well-designed data logging shield. We worked hard to engineer an inexpensive but well-rounded design. Not only is it easy to assemble and customize, it also comes with great documentation and libraries. You can get going quickly – saving data to files on any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis program. We even have a tutorial on how to use two free software programs to plot your data The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you know precisely what happened when!

Please note that this item does not come with an Arduino (you’ll need one to use with the shield), or an SD card. It does come with the RTC battery, however. The kit is un assembled, You’ll need some basic soldering skills to put it together, but even if you don’t have much experience you can get it done in under 1 hour.

  • SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry prevents damage to your SD card
  • Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery backup lasts for years
  • Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
  • Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
  • Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that require a lot of power to run
  • An Arduino with a ‘328 chip is pretty much required, you can get an upgrade chip from us if you have an older Arduino (such as NG/Diecimila)

For more information, including libraries, schematics and examples see the data logger shield webpage


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8 Comments

  1. Sweet! I’ll take two.

  2. My FAT32 library is 8k total, but not (yet) adapted to drop into the arduino. It uses only 600 bytes of ram, so it would work with a 168. For a few extra bytes of flash, there’s “optiboot” on code.google.com which does the arduino bootloader in under 512 bytes.

  3. Oops. I forgot to mention, my FAT32 is on http://github.com/tz1 in the sparkfun repository (since I designed it for openlog, jpeg trigger, and other sparkfun products).

  4. Also some of the discussion on github.com/nseidle under OpenLog about SD card problems probably applies here.

    SD cards will meet their class ratings when empty (and you need the big, long erase command – I have a format command in FAT32LIB), but can slow down as they fill up (it is in the spec!), and can pause to do internal housekeeping for up to 250mS. For OpenLog and Arduinos I suggested putting a 32kx8 SRAM SPI chip to act as a big buffer. That will hold enough data to get over the pauses even at high data rates – it has been tried and works well. Some of the code in my repository supports it.

  5. tz, great work there!

    we have tried a few SD libraries and we like fat16lib’s – there are many benefits including multiple file and directory handling, partition seeking, fat16 and fat32, so far works with all the sd an sdhc cards our customers have thrown at it, tons of example code and available under an open source license. its not the tinyist, it will run on a ‘168, but we have found that there tends to be code bloat on Arduino so we strongly encourage people to go with a ‘328

  6. So cool! Very good design.

  7. That is seriously cool. I’ve been wanting something like this for quite a while. Adafruit does it again!

  8. That is seriously cool. I’ve been wanting something like this for quite a while. Adafruit does it again!

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