It’s that time! HOLIDAY TIME! We’re going to do a gift guide almost every day for the next couple months, if you need to print out our store catalog, you can do that here (PDF).

Today we’re kicking it off with a gift guide for the Arduino enthusiast who already has an Arduino and wishes to do more!

Shields allow you to turn an Arduino into things like music players, robots, wireless and more. Here is just a small sampling of 10 great shields to be given as gifts for friends, family or yourself! If you’re hungry for more be sure to visit http://shieldlist.org/ for a very comprehensive list!

In our list we also indicated which ones are open source hardware – Lastly, post your favorite shields (and why) in the comments!

Let’s get started!

Sparkfun SM5100B Cellular Shield
The Cellular Shield for Arduino includes all the parts needed to interface your Arduino with an SM5100B cellular module. This allows you to easily add SMS, GSM/GPRS, and TCP/IP functionalities to your Arduino-based project. All you need to add cellular functionality to your Arduino project is a SIM card (pre-paid or straight from your phone) and an antenna and you can start sending Serial.print statements to make calls, send texts and serve web pages!

License: Not indicated

Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino
Here’s a handy Arduino shield: 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

License: Open source hardware

Arduino Ethernet shield with micro SD connector – Assembled
The Arduino Ethernet Shield (assembled) allows an Arduino board to connect to the internet. It is based on the Wiznet W5100 ethernet chip (datasheet). The Wiznet W5100 provides a network (IP) stack capable of both TCP and UDP. It supports up to four simultaneous socket connections. Use the Ethernet library to write sketches which connect to the internet using the shield.

The new Ethernet shield now includes a micro SD card connector, it is MEGA compatible and an on-board reset controller.
The ethernet shield connects to an Arduino board using long wire-wrap headers which extend through the shield. This keeps the pin layout intact and allows another shield to be stacked on top.

Arduino uses digital pins 10, 11, 12, and 13 (SPI) to communicate with the W5100 on the ethernet shield. These pins cannot be used for general i/o.
The shield provides a standard RJ45 ethernet jack. An Arduino is necessary to use this shield but is not included.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit – v1.0. Here is a design for a full-featured motor shield that will be able to power many simple to medium-complexity projects.

• 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated timer – no jitter!
• 4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 36VDC.
• Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
• Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or interleaved stepping.
• Pull down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up
• Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (10-22AWG) and power
• Arduino reset button brought up top
• 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for seperate logic/motor supplies
• Tested compatible with Arduino Mega, Diecimila & Duemilanove
• Download the easy-to-use Arduino software library, check out the examples and you’re ready to go!

License: Open source hardware

RobotPirate Nixie tube ArduiNIX Shield
The ArduiNIX shield is a user programmable platform for driving multiplexed Nixie tube or other high voltage displays.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Proto Shield for Arduino Kit – v.5

Works with the Uno! This prototyping shield is the best out there (well, I think so, at least). It works with UNO, NG, Diecimila and Duemilanove Arduinos.
Check out these awesome specifcations:

• It has a nice standard 0.1″x0.1″ prototying grid with big pads
• A IC pattern for adding DIP ICs up to 20 pins
• Power rails down the middle and sides
• A reset button and an extra general use button
• 2 3mm general use LEDs, red and green, as well as 2 matching resistors
• The ICSP header is up top if you like to upload to your Arduino using a programmer
• A surface-mount chip area for up to 14 SOIC size parts
• Compatible with either tiny breadboards or ‘standard’ breadboards with the rails removed.
• Every pin is brought out, including the new 3V and Reset header pins
• 2 0.1uF capacitors on either side for extra power stability

License: Open source hardware

Touchscreen! 320×240 OLED Screen. Resistive Touch Screen. Storage for 4 full resolution images or 60 128×128 images. Only uses Arduino pins D2 and D3. Draw Shapes, Pixels, Colors, Graphs, Buttons with complete ease, using a SubProcessing graphics API.

Liquidware: Touch Shield slide

License: Not indicated

Wayne and Layne Video Game Shield
The Video Game Shield is an Arduino add-on shield to make your own video games, including graphics, text, sound effects, and music! Using the power of open source, this Shield includes everything you need to make awesome black-and-white video games on your TV. It supports up to two Nintendo Wii Nunchuck controllers for an easy and familiar interface. Do you need to output text, graphics, or audio through RCA jacks to a TV? Do you need to work with two Nunchucks at the same time? You can do both of these things with Wayne and Layne’s Video Game Shield.

License: Open source hardware

Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit – v1.1

Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz,
12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It’s low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.

This shield is a kit, and comes with all parts you need to build it. Arduino, SD card, tools, speaker and headphones are not included. It is fairly easy to construct and anyone with a successful soldering project under their belt should be able to build it.

The shield comes with an Arduino library for easy use; simply drag uncompressed wave files onto the SD card and plug it in. Then use the library to play audio when buttons are pressed, or when a sensor goes off, or when serial data is received, etc. Audio is played asynchronously as an interrupt, so the Arduino can perform tasks while the audio is playing.

• Can play any uncompressed 22KHz, 16bit, mono Wave (.wav) files of any size. While it isnt CD quality, it is certainly good enough to play music, have spoken word, or audio effects. Check out the demo video/audio at the webpage
• Output is mono, into L and R channels, standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a connection for a speaker that is switched on when the headphones are unplugged
• Files are read off of a FAT16-formatted SD/MMC card 
• Included library and examples makes playing audio easy
• Please note that the library is rather bulky, requiring 10K of flash and more than 1/2 K of RAM for buffering audio. It works fine using an ATmega168-based

License: Open source hardware

WiShield – Async v2.0
Adds WiFi networking support to Arduino. 802.11b Wi-Fi certified. 1Mbps and 2 Mbps throughput speeds. Supports both infrastructure (BSS) and ad hoc (IBSS) wireless networks. WEP, both 64-bit and 128-bit. WPA/WPA2 (TKIP and AES) PSK.

License: Not indicated