The PandaShield is another excellent educational tool from Tindie seller METE HOCA. They’ve been developing a series of electronic teaching tools that have set a high bar for competitors to meet! The PandaShield is packed with features that cover a large range of the capabilities of the Arduino, from LEDs for output, buttons for input, and a whole lot more!
There’s a PCT2075 temperature sensor, TCRT5000 infrared sensor module for proximity detection as well as a connector to attach a separate HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor for precise distance measurement. Also provided are connectors to expand the board with OLED displays (like the SSD1306), HC-06 Bluetooth modules, and a connector for an MPU6050 triple-axis gyro/accelerometer.
Rounding out the included features are a standard RGB LED, a light-dependent resistor (LDR), a potentiometer connected to the analog pins, and a piezo buzzer connected to a PWM pin. There are even connectors to attach servos, meaning this could be used to explore basic robotics and motion control!
METE HOCA has shown that quality educational electronics boards can be affordable and still be packed with features and expandability. If you’re an educator looking to teach about microcontrollers with the Arduino platform, make sure to check out their entire Tindie store and see what other boards they have available!
