I'm new to using sensors and i really don't know where to start. I have a sunforge avoidance detection sensor and I dont have a clue on how to hook it up to my boar. I;ve been looking for tutorials all day but there all useless to me.I just want to know how to wire it up. I don't have room to use a bread board I just planned on just soldering everything together (can I Do that?). I just need a demonstration of what pins do I use and also can I still use an ethernet shield If I want to. And are there some real step by step tuts out there I can Find? all I got on the one tutorial is this (Sensor Access Digital 3 interface,) how do I do that?
Post a link to the sensor you have, better still to the data sheet. Then we can see if it can be directly connected or if you need to make some sort of interface.
Without this vital information no one can help you.
You need to power and ground the sensor and read the TTL output from the sensor.
To do this you need to use a digitalRead command:
The sensor outputs high when no obstacle is detected, low if an obstacle is detected,
I think if you soldered wires to the pins on the sensor you could get away with not using a breadboard, but I would strongly recommend getting one, especially if you have 37 sensors to figure out...
Many sensors have different requirements, there is no one way to connect a sensor.
You have to be specific as to exactly what sensor you want to use if you want specific instructions as to how to wire it up.
Basically sensor outputs come in these forms:-
Digital output single bit - just wire up ground and power and the sensor output to a digital input.
Analogue outputs - two types of these those that need a pull up / down resistor to form a potentiometer and those that don't.
Sensors connected by some sort of bus
a) I2C bus wiring
b) SPI bus wiring
c) 1 wire bus wiring
d) Asynchronous serial data - RS232, TTL or RS485 are all different examples of this.
However there are more sorts than this.