We recently noticed the Arduino Compatible W5500 Ethernet Board from Keyestudio in Altronics and had to give it a run. We love Ethernet for many applications where a fixed connection is better suited than WiFi. Unfortunately, Ethernet is often added to an Arduino via a shield, increasing the footprint of your build.

As expected, we were able to quickly test this Ethernet board, and it appears to work with all standard Ethernet libraries. It’s worth noting that you may need to update to the latest IDE version, but this is really something you should be doing anyway.

The board presents to the Arduino IDE as a standard UNO and behaves just like an Arduino with an Ethernet shield attached.

There are some drivers and documentation available from Keyestudio, however, we found they weren’t required to get a web server running and some other basic functionality. This is great news, as it means you should be able to load any code which was intended for an UNO + Ethernet Shield, without any code modifications.

The documentation available isn’t terribly exhaustive, however, we weren’t left wanting anything more than what we were given - especially given the great compatibility.

Naturally, as with the available shields, there’s a microSD card slot provided too for datalogging and data storage requirements. It too works with the standard SD libraries available in the Arduino IDE, so implementation is easy!

So if you want to get some Ethernet connectivity with your next Arduino project, we’d highly recommend the W5500 development board. While it’s not a whole lot cheaper than an UNO + Ethernet shield, the self-contained nature makes it a great choice for space saving, and applications which require a shield or other interfacing where you might want to keep the bulkiness to a minimum.

The Keyestudio W5500 Ethernet Development Board is available at Altronics:

• Development Board Z6467 $59.95

Altronics Announces New Store In Adelaide!

Look out Adelaide - you’re about to get a new Altronics store! That’s right, Altronics is opening a new store in mid November! Check it out soon at 316 Main North Road, Prospect.