Has anyone ever used this shield to connect a makeblock board to a raspberry PI?
The shield has 26 pins and the documentation states “Come with header and doesn’t use GPIO pins”. So where would it connect to? GPIO pins 1-26?
I have a couple makeblock kits, with many sensors, that i no longer use but would be interested to connect them to a PI and program in python.
Hi there!
This is a good question.
You may want to start with this document: https://www.robotshop.com/media/files/pdf/10504-getting-started.pdf
This ‘‘getting started’’ will show you how to plug and interface the shield.
Let me know if this answers your question.
The shield supplies the Pi with vcc and RX-TX - GPIO are left open for whatever else
You MUST experiment with the examples provided in the Makeblock Master Library though. Most people didn’t bother to report these issues when publishing their projects. I did a thorough job at presenting all that could go wrong in my project.
I suggest running a “main” or master python module in the command line.
Always initiate the shield before your functions. Your program should look like an Arduino sketch. So things like bot.start() should be in a setup paragraph after imports.
I was never able to find a “demo script”. There may have been a py module or two from the original master. I doubt it exists anymore. (Just a theory)
Anyone who gets their hands on one has great potential. There are lots of boards for this shield. There are not many shields left. The Makeblock Pi system is VERY powerful.
