Part of The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009

Arduino shields – This is a new category mostly because there are so many open source hardware shields in 2009. These “shields” add music, internet, GPS and additional functions.

Arduino shields and add-ons, these are projects that enhance the Arduino by adding additional functionality such as music, GPS, internet and more. They are added on top of the Arduino and some can be stacked.

Here are the official shields from the Arduino team:

• Xbee Shield – This shield allows multiple Arduino boards to communicate wirelessly over distances up to 100 feet (indoors) or 300 feet (outdoors) using the Maxstream Xbee Zigbee module. details
• Motor Shield – This shield allows an Arduino board to control DC motors and read encoders. details
• Ethernet Shield – This shield allows an Arduino board to connect to the internet. details
• Arduino Protoshield – design for an Arduino protoshield that sits on top of the main Arduino board for prototyping. details

Keeping reading for a ton more…

Adafruit Proto Shield for Arduino Kit

This prototyping shield works with NG, Diecimila and Duemilanove Arduinos.
Price: $12.50 and up
Visit the project page
Buy one @ Maker Shed

Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino kit

Arduino is a great starting point for electronics, and with a motor shield it can also be a nice tidy platform for robotics and mechatronics. Here is a design for a full-featured motor shield that will be able to power many simple to medium-complexity projects.
Price: $19.50
Visit the project page
Buy one @ Maker Shed

Adafruit Ethernet (XPort/WIZnet) shield for Arduino kit

Want your Arduino to check email? How about sending a twitter (which can then be easily forwarded to a phone via SMS)? Or grabbing data from a website? Or serving up sensor data world-wide?There are so many possibilites for projects that connect to the Internet to get data, now there’s an easy way to do it with an Arduino.
Price: $15.00
Visit the project page

Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit

Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult — the Waveshield for the Arduino solves this problem. This clever shield board can play up to 22kHz, 12-bit uncompressed audio files of any length. A great low-cost, easy-to-make kit.
Price: $21.95 and up
Visit the project page
Buy one @ Maker Shed

Adafruit GPS logger shield kit

GPS shield for Arduino kit with data-logging capability. After building this easy kit, you can create your own geo-locative project. This shield is designed to make GPS projects straight-forward and easy. Plug in a supported GPS module and run any of the example Arduino sketches for parsing GPS data (NMEA sentences), logging to a FAT16-formatted SD flash memory card and storing analog sensor data along with precise location, date and time in CSV format.
Price: $19.50
Visit the project page

ArduiNIX

The ArduiNIX shield is a user programmable platform for driving multiplexed Nixie tube, Vacuum Fluourescent displays* or other high voltage displays.
Price: $45.00
Visit the project page

Danger Shield

The Danger Shield is an add-on for the Arduino micro controller board. It contains a variety of fun and useful electronic circuits that you can use to do fun and useful things. It is a fully self-contained shield. You plug it into your Arduino, and you can immediately start using it. No extra things to hook up, no external components.
Price: $30.00
Visit the project page

Pocket Piano Synth Kit for Arduino

This is a board for making the Arduino into a portable stand alone music synthesizer. It plugs directly into the Arduino board and provides 25 multiplexed keys (2 full octaves), 4 pots, status LED, reset switch, digital to analog converter IC, and a RCA audio jack. The Arduino board with its powerful AVR processor is more than adequate for a wide range of sound synthesis techniques. We have experimented with simple additive / wave-table synthesis, frequency modulation, ring modulation, sampling, polyphony, various arpeggiators. The whole thing can be powered over the Arduino’s USB port for convenient experimenting. Arduino not included. The board is designed to mount easily to 1/8″ panel material, and 1/2″ round keys can be made out of wood or plastic.
Price: $49.95
Visit the project page
Buy one @ Maker Shed

Sanguino Breakout Shield

This is the Sanguino Breakout Shield board. It is primarily intended as a shield for existing Sanguino boards, but we’ve also included the footprint for a full Sanguino on the PCB as well. Its up to you as the builder to decide what shape the board should take: You can build it as a single board with an integrated Sanguino, or you can add headers that allow you to plug an existing Sanguino into the board.
Price: $16.00
Visit the project page

SparkFun Ardumoto – Motor Driver Shield

This is a motor shield for Arduino that will control two DC motors. Based on the L298 H-bridge, the Ardumoto can drive up to 2 amps per channel. The board takes its power from the same Vin line as the Arduino board,  includes blue and yellow LEDs to indicate active direction, and all driver lines are diode protected from back EMF.
Price: $24.95
Visit project page

SparkFun GPS Shield

With the GPS Shield you can add GPS functionality to your Arduino. A connector for the popular EM-406 GPS receiver is populated on the board, and footprints for EM-408 and EB-85A connectors are also made available (connectors are not soldered on or included and can be found below in the related items). The regular GPS pins (RX, TX, PPS, etc.) are also broken out to a 10-pin 0.1″ pitch header, and a small protoyping area is also provided.
Price: $16.95
Visit project page

SparkFun Joystick Shield

The Joystick Shield sits on top of your Arduino and turns it into a simple controller. Five momentary push buttons (4+ joystick select button) and a two-axis thumb joystick gives your Arduino functionality on the level of old Nintendo controllers.
Price: $4.95
Visit project page

SparkFun MegaShield Kit

The Arduino Mega now has its very own prototyping shield! The MegaShield mates with the Arduino Mega board and gives the user a prototyping area, two general LEDs, and, most important of all, the Arduino Mega reset switch is brought to the top level. The shield also works with our small breadboards if you don’t want to solder to the prototyping area.
Price: $17.95
Visit project page

SparkFun microSD Shield

Running out of memory space in your Arduino project? The microSD Shield equips your Arduino with mass-storage capability, so you can use it for data-logging or other related projects.
Price:
Visit project page

Scope Clock Shield


Turn your X-Y capable analog oscilloscope it a very unique clock with this kit. A very cool (and practical) way to put your idle scope to work.
Price: $34.95 (not for sale any longer 12/2009)
Visit the project page

Wingshield Screwshield

The ScrewShield for Arduino is a “wing-format” shield that extends the Arduino pins to sturdy, secure, and dependable screw terminal blocks. The wing design allows you to extend just one or both sides (Analog and Digital) of the Arduino and still access its jumpers, LEDs, and buttons. Thanks to the ScrewShield’s extra-long header pins, it can be stacked above or below other shields.
Price: $12.00
Visit the project page
Buy one @ Maker Shed