Desloo Ethernet Shield W5100 Micro-sd Card Slot for Arduino 2009 UNO Mega 1280 2560 Duemilanove

I purchased this in early 2015 and finally got around to trying it early 2016. I used sample code I found on the internet to test both the network and the SD card function (separately, so far). It works fine. I started to building up a project with it (where I was already using the A0 and A1 inputs), and I ran into a problem. This board seems to re-purpose the A0 and A1 analog inputs into digital pins (14 and 15) instead. To get my existing analog inputs to work, I had to move them to A2 and A3. Not a problem, except I'm out of analog inputs now. I found an Arduino shield pin usage table that suggested this "re-purposing" might be the problem, and my testing it seems to verify. Possibly there is something in the library, or a different library, that will remedy this. If learn more, I'll post it here. If you know more about his, please comment back.

I wasn't expecting much for only $7 and my expectations were pretty much met. As others have mentioned, the shipping packaging is terrible and all the pins and headers were badly bent. Even after carefully straightening everything it's very difficult to get everything aligned to seat it properly into my UNO. I also found two pins on the W5100 chip with a solder bridge - very sloppy and careless QA. I only bought this for tinkering with and it will likely end up in my junk box soon, particularly since having to tether it via CAT5 to my router really limits the possibilities for use. Even so, it's pretty neat to see the TCP/IP network stack running on an Arduino. So I won't totally bash this product and for students learning about TCP/IP networking and experimenting it's worth the money.

I put off getting an Arduino Ethernet adapter because common prices were as high or more than the Arduino itself. I first bought an adapter that needed to be cabled to the Arduino, which worked well, but I needed to find a connector, ribbon cable and header pins , then fire up the soldering iron. I found this adapter shortly afterwards for a similar price and it just plugs in and is ready to go, plus it has the SD card feature. Being a shield, it does cover the Arduino, so also having a non-shield adapter can be handy.I then got onto the official Arduino website, downloaded the webserver example from the Learning section and was serving a webpage within minutes. It's almost too easy... almost, but now I can go on to defining my application, adding sensors and such.

Lights blink but the Ethernet does not work, in reading one of the reviews I examined the board I found solder shorts on the W5100 , will try to clean them and get back to this. OK Back with an update... The board had solder shorts but where they were did not matter due to all the pins that were shorted together go to GND, so it did not matter about the solder shorts. After that I move the board from the 2560 Mega to a R3 UNO and it works in the UNO. I swapped the one I had on the UNO for this one that was on a mega, no change in the software on ether board and after the swap both boards are working, the Desloo Ethernet Shield W5100 is now working on the R3 UNO and the R3 Ethernet shild from Arduino is in the mega .

This is a product targeted for a niche market. If you're equipped with the knowledge and background (and energy) required to make this work - it does work as expected, using Arduino software and forum support. One application might be a data logger. Before this product I tried the WiFi board and had problems - The Wifi board would work as a server, but not a client. For those who understand, it makes sense to be a client, sending your data out through your home router to an external webserver - you can achieve this (just about as inexpensively and more reliably) using this ethernet board with a TP-Link Travel Router. Hope this helps!

It works fine. I only have two gripes. One is that they need to ship it with better protection for the header pins. They were bent on both ethernet cards that I received. Another is that they don't come preprogrammed with a MAC address. It will use any MAC address that you tell it to. This is not really a great option.

The solder holding the SD card slot created a short on the SPI pins so the unit would not function until I removed the aluminum sd card holder, then I can use the shield as webserver, although I never got the SD card slot to work after removing the short circuit. (It may just be code)

I noticed solder bridges on the microchip before I used it, and I would highly doubt it would run with shorted pins.Great news is that I fixed the shield and it worked. The device has been running for a week without problems.Bad news is when your shield arrives and they may have the same issue I had.Money well worth it if you know how to fix it.