Those of you who have been following my personal twitter account will have seen endless pictures of the shiny new net+sd shield for the Kakapo.

20140927_160940

There's plenty of shields with ethernet and SD card support, but there's a few different things about this one compared to others:

  • The latest WizNet W5500 hardware TCP/IP chip
    • 32kB SRAM, 8 sockets
    • Automatic circular buffer management
    • Compact 48-pin LQFP chip
    • SPI support up to 80MHz
    • Variable length transfers to reduce overhead
    • 10/100 Full and Half Duplex support


  • Built-in I2C MAC address EEPROM
  • MicroSD card socket
  • W5500 chip is automatically reset by Kakapo reset sources
  • W5500 and SD card MISO shield pin is buffered; does not drive pin at all when deselected
  • Four status LEDs: Link, Activity, 100M and Full Duplex
  • Jumpers for easy disable/enable features; no soldering to free shield pins from features not required!
    • Jumpers for W5500 !CS line and !INT lines
    • Jumper for SD card !CS line
    • Jumper for I2C 4.7k pull-up resistors
    • Opening !CS jumpers enforces part remains deselected


  • MAC address sticker for easy identification
  • All pins used explained on the bottom side of the shield
  • Same pins used as the common Arduino Ethernet shield


The shield is going through some final testing, and will be available soon!