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I/O pins available on Metawear C

alessandromontanarialessandromontanari
in Firmware
Hello,

I need to use 8 pins on the Metawear C so I was wondering if I could use the pins HCD, SDA and SCL as standard I/O pins.

Additionally, is it possible to use more pins? 
Are there other pins available on the PCB? Or, can I reuse the switch and LED pins?

Thanks,
Alessandro 

Comments

  • MattMatt
    edited October 2016
    @alessandromontanari

    Are you running the MetaWear firmware or custom firmware?  Reusing fixed function pins generally will not work with the way GPIOs are exposed to the APIs in firmware.

    On the MetaWear C base model, you can use SDA and SCL as standard GPIO pins because there are no I2C sensors on the bus.  It may or may not work on the other models, depending on what you use the pins for.

    The HCD will not work quite the same, because it is connected to a MOSFET in open drain configuration.

    If you are open to getting very crafting with a soldering iron, then yes, you could use the switch pin, the LED pins, the temp sensor pins (two), the color sensor LED pin, the proximity sensor interrupt pin and potentially the Magnetometer pins (but they are only exposed as tiny BGA bumps).

    You should be able to use the switch pin as is.  The LED and Temp pins you probably want to remove the passives they are connected to.  On the C model, nothing will be attached to the color sensor and proximity pins.

    Cheers,
    Matt
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