Which Wings and MegaWings will work with the DUO?


jwr39

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I am interested in the DUO, but also the Retrocade MegaWing.  Will they work together, or is the Arduino Mega form factor of the DUO incompatible with the Retrocade MegaWing?   I currently suspect I need to get a PapilioPro+Retrocade and also a separate DUO.

 

More generally, will any of the MegaWings work with the DUO?  Are all the "normal" Wings compatible, or only certain ones of them?  On page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13588168/papilio-duo-drag-and-drop-fpga-circuit-lab-for-mak it indicates support for six Wings was retained, but it isn't absolutely clear whether that's any six wings, or six of particular kinds.

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Hello,

 

Sorry that is not clearer, but yes, the MegaWings will only work with the Papilio One and Papilio Pro while the shields will only work with the DUO. So it is not possible to mix the two. I do think that I will at some point make a Retrocade Shield, it will be a lower end version without the quarter inch jacks, ADC or joystick. 

 

For the Wings, all Wings are compatible with the DUO and the Papilio One/Pro boards.

 

Jack.

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Thanks for your rapid reply!  I wonder if it makes sense to make either an adapter board or a special set of short ribbon cables, to connect the DUO to a "standard" Papilio MegaWing?

 

By an adapter board, I mean a small PCB breadboard with header pins in the Arduino Mega shape on the bottom (to plug into the DUO), and Papilio MegaWing header sockets on the top (to accept a MegaWing plugging in on top).  The downside of this approach is it might make difficult exposing any additional pins the DUO has.  That might require an extra set of 90-degree header sockets on the top or bottom to access the extra pins.

 

By a short set of ribbon cables, I mean a couple one-to-three inch cables with header pins on one end, header sockets on the other, such that the header pins plug into the DUO, and a MegaWing can be plugged into the sockets, with just enough length in the ribbon part to twist to accomodate the orientation differences between the DUO and MegaWing.

 

The advantage of a board is the mechanical connection holding the boards together; the advantage of the ribbon cables is better access to all the capabilities.

 

I haven't yet compared the exact pinouts of the Papilio Pro, DUO, MegaWing, and Arduino Mega format to see if there are any complications involved.  I expect there are likely only two unique pinout configurations among those four items [DUO = Arduino Mega, Pro = MegaWing] but it's likely best to check.  If there are no complications it might be easy enough for people to buy straight-thru ribbon cable segments with existing header connections, or create the proper configurations from header plugs, sockets, and ribbon cable, either wire-wrapped or soldered on a breadboard.

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The Papilio Duo is compatible with a whole bunch of Arduino Shields- so there are loads of accessories out there already.

 

I'm not sure if there are any caveats for 5V vs 3V3 shields, but new Arduino boards are necessitating a wealth of 3V3 boards anyway so that's not much of a problem if so.

 

I'm currently working on a new LCD Shield, with triple RGB backlight, joystick input and bargraph display which should hopefully be fully compatible with the Duo. I'll definitely be trying to get it up and running with Zpuino anyway.

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Yes, that is a good point, there are a lot more shields available for the DUO then there are MegaWings. 5V shields should work with the DUO unless they need to be driven by 5V. The only one I know of that requires that is RAMPS shield.

 

Gadgetoid, I look forward to your LCD shield, it sounds great.

 

Jack.

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