The connector problem

One real drawback with the development board is the lack of connectors. A board designed for a hobby robot controller needs lots of well designed connectors for hooking up sensors, servos and other peripherals.
The Handyboard used a female header that was nice because the layout was such that you could make connectors that couldn't be plugged in backwards, like this.
So far my favorite is the Atom Bot Board from Lynxmotion. It has three pin male headers separated into groups of four. Each group can be tied to either 5v or battery voltage, so you can use them for sensors and R/C servos. It has a built in buzzer and leds too. There is a 5v linear regulator that provides adequate power for small projects.
In order to get the Netburner MOD5213 connected to the outside world I need to make some connectors. One choice would be to simply toss the dev board and design a new board from the ground up. Without ruling that out completely, let me think about this for a second.
The dev board offers a few goodies of its own that I'd be giving up. It has two RS-232 standard connectors tied to two of the MOD5213's three UARTS. There are pull-ups for the i2c bus, a real-time clock, four LED's and a 3.3v linear regulator too. If there's a way I can use all this and still add all the connectors and things necessary for the robot, I want to do it.
Well, there's a small prototyping area on dev board, I suppose I could use that. But point-to-point wiring connectors, regulators and level shifters, even if it would all fit, won't do. Something a little more permanent (and elegant) is required.
So I've decided to go with a small daughter card that would plug into the the dev board. That way, I can continue to use the dev board and all it's goodies to develop code on a stable, tested platform and have all the connectors, regulators and level shifters on a separate board.
There are two (unstuffed) headers on the dev board that connect to all 40 of the MOD5213 pins. I soldered female headers into each to receive the daughter card. These headers also make nice plugs for prototyping circuits. The card itself is being designed with ExpressPCB. More details and the current design file are on the Robot Room website.