Getting Started with the Grove System from SEEED Studio - Workbench Wednesdays

when you're prototyping an idea soldering header pins and connecting jumper wires have two issues they take a little bit of extra time and they're not always a permanent connection you could solder bare wires but then this intro doesn't work hi I'm James and welcome back to workbench Wednesdays in this video we take a look at the Grove system from Seed Studio let's go connect foreign system consists of the connector cables modules and microcontrollers looking at the Grove connector you might think this is a jst style connector side note jst is not a connector style even though if you say that most people know what you mean jst or Japan solderless terminal is a company that makes interconnects things like wires cables and connectors for example the jst pH is just one of their many products well regardless Groves connector is not from jst and it does not appear there is a worldwide supplier for it but seed does sell 10 packs of the connector for about 1.50 so it is easy to use them in a prototype design the cables come in various lengths and there is even a socket style for header pins the wires are always yellow white red and black however these have different functions well at least the yellow and white do Grove supports multiple interfaces digital analog uart and I squared C each use the yellow and white fires differently which means you need to take care when connecting modules to make sure you are not connecting an analog sensor to an i squared C port speaking of modules there are literally hundreds of devices from accelerometers to LEDs to temperature sensors to displays and so much more available while a specific component may not be a Grove module I think just about every type of electronic component is covered also vendors other than Seed Studio make Grove compatible products for example this is a digital temperature sensor from TE Connectivity Grove modules come in standardized sizes and they have standardized mounting holes but I don't have anything to screw them into so I just used tape most of the modules I'm using in this video came from a Grove beginner kit this was a nice set because as a whole these modules were already connected together but they break out of the PCB so that they can be used in other projects and then connected together with the Grove system if you're getting started today I would recommend one of these starter kits instead because they offer a little bit more variety however I'm jumping ahead because what do these modules connect to well microcontrollers and here are three exam levels Lotus is an Arduino compatible board with multiples of the different growth types this wio terminal has a samd51 microcontroller with a bunch of built-in stuff and then for Raspberry Pi you get a hat no okay fine the pie hat looks like this there are also similar adapters for micro bit beaglebone and others by the way it's probably obvious but I'm not going to cover every possible option because the ecosystem is so massive but remember if you do have questions a good place for us to talk about them is the element 14 Community which is linked below foreign ER board to a sensor and display is straightforward you just connect them programming should be a matter of using example code except my plan was to have an Arduino read a couple of sensors and display their values on the OLED however I cannot get the OLED to work using the I squared C scanner code I verified that the Arduino can see the display 3C is its address so I went to seeds Wiki for this OLED I'm using the same type of Arduino and the OLED module I'm using has the same SSD 1315 driver IC this page says that this code should display hello world so I put it into the Arduino IDE and uploaded it but when we look at the screen we get nothing now before you offer up a bunch of troubleshooting steps I spent way more time than I had on this problem and I know the OLED actually does work because I got it working in the next section also I use this exact same setup in the past I just couldn't remember how I got the display to work the good news is the barometric pressure sensor works fine with their example I uploaded that and got a readout on the serial monitor I verified the sensor is working by using my finger to cause the temperature to go up so I got at least that much working and no soldering was required one advantage to a solution like this is that you can easily move the hardware from one platform to another but don't forget you have to consider the code the Arduino is mostly programmed in C Raspberry Pi most of the stuff is in Python so let's go talk about that pie hat real quick the pie base hat looks similar to the Lotus I showed before it has a bunch of Grove connectors there's also a small microcontroller on its back the ports labeled pwm uart and I squared C connect directly to the appropriate gpio pins on the pi remember you will need to enable I squared C in raspy config before you can use it six pins connect to the digital i o but heads up the PIN numbers seem to be picked at random since the pi does not have an analog to digital converter that microcontroller I showed before provides the four analog inputs and for that microcontroller there is an unpopulated swd header with three of its gpios so here's the thing seat Studio only has example code for a small number of Grove modules that run on raspian or now Raspberry Pi OS that work with the pi base hat in fact of all of the modules I have there are only four that have working example code several of these like the simple push button rely on a library that is no longer active even more troubling is that based on this GitHub comment from the grove.pi maintainer it appears C does not supporting them on the pi anymore it's not all bad news though because if you spend some time looking through another vendor's example code or the data sheets for the chips on the modules you can get them to work for example I found that the hello world OLED example did not work on the pi either but after I added some initialization commands I got the screen to work by the way even though you saw it first I worked on the Arduino example after this and I tried to do the same thing with that code but it still didn't work and then I ran out of time anyway I ended up copying the examples from seed for the light and sound sensors to display their values on the OLED the cool part is all of this runs on the pi as a python script here you can see that the light sensor is working it pegs at 591 until I make it dark by covering it with my hand the sound sensor however seems random it's different values than if I leave the pin floating but I tried snapping my fingers and playing this really excellent track however that doesn't seem to affect anything at all so if you want to use the Grove base hat with a recent version of the pios I highly recommend you check to see whether the module you want to use is supported I just feel like spending a day rewriting basic code goes against the value of a rapid prototyping ecosystem that's what I think but I would love to hear your thoughts on that by the way seat Studio does offer a board called the quick Hub this board adapts grow of I squared C connectors to quick and stima QT those two are from sparkbun and Adafruit overall the growth system offers a lot of flexibility and options for connecting modules to microcontroller boards my only caution is to check around to see how much support there is for the modules you plan to use fortunately there are places like the element 14 Community where you can ask those questions I'm always amazed at the quality of answers even for my dumb questions over there you'll also find show notes with links to most of the products shown in this video and as always thank you for watching for now it is time for me to get back to connecting multiple things together on my electronics workbench foreign

Channel: element14 presents

Views: 11,096

Keywords: electronics, hardware, hacking, mods, element14, maker, engineering, element14presents, seeedstudio, grovesystem, groveconnectors, raspberrypi, arduino, seeed, seeedgrove

Id: pHo0iHWRK88

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022