18-COMPANION-SHIELD

Amicus18 Shield is a PCB that fits over the Amicus18 board and provides extra functionality, such as Ethernet, Motor control, LCD, Smartcard, GPS, GSM etc. All Arduino shields will physically fit on the Amicus18, however, Arduino source code is not compatible with Amicus18, as they differ in two very crucial aspects. First, the Amicus uses a Microchip PICmicrotm for it's microcontroller, while the Arduino uses an Atmel AVR microcontroller. The Arduino uses a subset of the language C, where as the Amicus18's supplied language is BASIC. However, there is no reason that any PICmicrotm language cannot be used with Amicus18, in fact, it's encouraged. The entry level shield and in the authors opinion, the most useful, is the Companion shield. This is a PCB laid out in the pattern of a solder less breadboard. The holes are single sided, which means that components can easily be removed using solder mop braid, or a solder vacuum tool, if a mistake is made, or components need to be re-used.