DIY DMX Shield

Many of you may have remembered that a few months back I worked on a DMX shield to interface with the ethernet shield and an Arduino. I’ve finally got the DMX shield off the breadboard and onto a PCB. It was very exciting for me as I haven’t made one since high school. Here in Townsville, Australia it’s a little difficult to find the supplies to make PCB’s (at least affordably). Ferric chloride seemed to be the most difficult thing to find as Jaycar only sells Ammonium Persulphate which I’ve been told is quite inferior to ferric chloride. After a bit of investigative work I found out that Solex, an Alltronics distributer, sells it for $15/500ml (I think they overcharged me, the magazine said $10. sigh $5 I could’ve spent on…something!). Not too bad though. You can find the eagle files below if you’re interested. Also don’t forget to download the latest Sparkfun parts library. There’s tons of helpful goodies in there.

Download Eagle Files

Latest Sparkfun parts library for eagle

I’ve included a way for people to connect to the board by either mounting a Neutrik MC3FBH1 or to use a connector that also includes connections for a reset button. This makes it easier for people building this into a project box as I did in the photo below (don’t mind the ugly perfboard version of the DMX shield):