JeeNodes and a Motor Shield

Over the holidays I spent some time soldering up some stuff that I purchased lately.  The first is a Arduino Motor Shield from Adafruit.  I had just purchased this because it seemed generally useful, not because I had a specific project in mind.  I really hate wasting time breadboarding an h-bridge circuit when I just want to spin a motor.  It soldered up pretty easily in part due to the ridiculously detailed assembly instructions.  That wasn't meant as an insult to the instructions; I think it may have been the best documentation I've seen in quite a while.

The second soldering project was a set of three JeeNodes I bought to start working on doing some home automation projects. These assembly instructions were very good (though not *quite* as detailed as Lady Ada's typical instructions).  Everything went together smoothly, even the surface mount radio component that I was a little worried about.

I then ran the motor shield and all three JeeNodes through some tests to makes sure I had assembled them correctly.  I walked through the JeeNode tests here. It was really handy that all of the JeeNodes were pre-flashed with the RF12demo sketch which acts as a basic configuration and send and receive utility, which makes doing basic RF check out very simple.  Luckily everything worked on the first try.

Onward towards automating my house!