Cheap Ethernet interface for Arduino boards

radengr said:

I am planning on trying a bit with this myself. I have an Uno and a Mega on order, and a bunch of plain ATmega328P chips on order so I can make my own cheap Arduino clones if I get a design I like. Right now I'm looking at using the $6.50 ENC28J60 Ethernet boards to interface my Arduinos. I prefer wired it I can manage it.

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Do you have links to the Ethernet boards?

I also have quite the collection of uC boards/chips. I've got a bunch of PIC32 boards I'm hoping to get busy with soon (but summer is for outside so that may slow things down a bit ).

I'm not sure I love the Arduino but there is no arguing that for quick solutions it's easy to get my hands on (now found at Radio Shack), are easy to work with and are flexible.

The Ethernet module is the ENC28J60 which I picked up from ebay. Mine just came in and it has a url on it: www.geeetech.com. That page has some more information: http://www.geeetech.com/arduino-enc28j60-ethernet-module-p-263.html.

It looks like there are a fair amount of people using this module (lots of code and info on the web) but I don't think it is as well supported as the official ethernet shield.

At less than $8 (US) I think I can live with a little library modification.

It's on sale for $6.50 from Geetech now.

midon said:

It's on sale for $6.50 from Geetech now.

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The $8 figure includes S&H and me rounding up the number to the next dollar. Still that's cheap and it should work with my Chipkit, Pinguino and bare PIC32s.

So how difficult is it to get that $8 Ethernet module to work with the Arduino? Pretty cheap if not much else is involved.

Mine are on the way and I'll find out. I have larger (ram/flash) Arduino-alike boards so it won't go to waste.

Excellent. I only have an Uno board sitting here, but hopefully this can be used with this board as well.

I ordered one of the Ethernet modules from Geeetech two weeks ago, and it is said to have shipped the next day, but I've not seen anything yet.

UPDATE: The module arrived today, so apparently shipping takes two weeks a day in this case.

Ishmael said:

I ordered one of the Ethernet modules from Geeetech two weeks ago, and it is said to have shipped the next day, but I've not seen anything yet.
UPDATE: The module arrived today, so apparently shipping takes two weeks a day in this case.

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I've not seen mine yet and it's been 2 days of 2 weeks. So I guess I'll wait until Saturday before I begin to panic.

Thanks

When I've ordered electronics from various Chinese sellers on ebay it has taken anywhere from 10 days to a month. I think they get cheap shipping by bundeling lots of orders togeather so sometimes you have to wait a bit longer. The good news is I have *always* had them arrive eventually, and over the past few years I've probably placed 200 orders for things (mostly $1 cables or dc power tips, etc).

Okay, I've received all four. I may get a chance to test with them in the next week.

A further update. I currently have one of my Arduinos setup with a Seeed XBee/Relay Shield using an Sparkfun RN-XV WiFly module. The intention is to replace my current irrigation controller. I've removed the power connector from the Seeed board as it interfered with the WiFly Antenna connector. I'll be using the WiFly via it's serial port. The Sparkfun board doesn't have the SPI connected. After I get this up and running with node.js. I'll test out another Arduino with the SPI Ethernet module. The intention is to have a simple interface on the Arduino and a heavier duty interface on the Node.js server.