On a Mega shield with stack-able headers, and power connectors… there are not very much of an edges left 
Yeah, that’s right.
If I remember, one of my prototype boards had a connector laid out for BT. However, I didn’t need it on that project!
Alan KM6VV
I will think about it for a few more hours and reconfirm that viewmate does not find any issues in the generated gerber files and will probably order me a few boards (again).
The 3d output from Diptrace currently looks like:
Hopefully enough room in front for a BT XBee adapter… May have to order one to try out. Also will probably order a few stackable headers from Robotshop to see if they work any better for me.
Was thinking about trying to add an adapter for Robotis AX-12/18 type servos here, but actually wonder if it might be easier to be external. That is simply plug a 3 wire connector to one of the Serial ports and have the adapter/cable do the appropriate connections for AX and maybe RX/MX servos. That way it would probably have separate power for that type of servo… Should check maybe someone already has one. Also may want to try out other Servos like ones from Dongbu or …
Kurt
What interface do Orion servos require? Standard?
Alan KM6VV
Looks great Kurt. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it’s gonna work ok this time.
Hi Alan,
I will take a stab at it, although Nathan could give you a much better answer.
The Orion Servos start off using the standard servo pulses with the center at 1500us. So my guess is that you could for example plug them into something like an SSC-32 and they would behave very similar to an HS-5685.
However unlike the 5685 you can turn them off without having to power cycle them… You can do this like:
hservo [val1&0x1F-30000+258]
which is a Pulse of something like: 129us
But in addition to this, you can ask the servo for feedback, which I know includes the current position. I believe you do this, by again issuing a specific width pulse and then you turn the IO pin into an input pin and wait for the servo to pulse you back, with it’s current position. Which unfortunately we won’t be able to do with the SSC-32 as the servo pins are output only. Nathan has a library (BMServo), which does this for Arduinos (their DaVinci) board, but only on IO pins 9 and 10 as these are connected to a timer and as such you are more likely to have clean servo pulses. They needed this with their Fire-Ant as it uses 25 servos and the Orion shield currently only controls 24 servos.
At times I wonder about maybe making a shield like I have here plus the hardware support like the SSC-32 or Arc32 has but still have each pin be backed by an IO pin…
Kurt
Oh that’s right, no way to read with SSC-32. And I’ve got a few.
Can’t wait for my Fire Ant to get here!
Thanks for the explanation!
The Orion servos are a little pricy, 'tho.
Thanks!
Alan KM6VV
I’m amazed again! 
How did this project turn out, kurte?
Are you still developing it at all?
How is the compatibility with various Mega sized boards?
The only Mega size board I have right now is the Arduino Mega ADK.
8-Dale
Will answer more on the Due thread.