Arduino Giga which digital pins shouldn't be used

Hardware GIGA R1
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I am working on a project that will utilize at least 69 digital pins (15 stepper motors, 15 proximity sensors and 24 solenoids). This is my first time using Giga board, previously worked only on UNO. So I know I should leave D0 and D1 out, as they are used for serial communication. However, I read on the the cheat sheet the following:

Digital Pins

The GIGA R1 features more pins than any other Arduino board for makers, a full 76 digital pins. Though many of them serve another purpose and shouldn't be used for GPIO if you have other pins available.

  • 0 - RX0
  • 1 - TX0
  • 8 - SCL2
  • 9 - SDA2
  • 10 - CS
  • 11 - COPI
  • 12 - CIPO
  • 13 - SCK
  • 14 - TX3
  • 15 - RX3
  • 16 - TX2
  • 17 - RX2
  • 18 - TX1
  • 19 - RX1
  • 20 - SDA
  • 21 - SCL

My question:
Which of the above pins (D0 and D1 excluded) I can use as "normal" digital pins? Can I for example damage the board if I set any of those pins to HIGH?

I hope don't have to rewire this...

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Hi there @nagiewont ! The above pins listed are used for serial communication, for example SCL2 / SDA2 is used for an additional I2C bus, and RX3 / TX3 is for another UART connection.

There should be no "danger" in using these as regular digital pins, but bare in mind that if you are using for example the SCL/SDA pins, you can't use that particular I2C bus.

As an example, the Crypto Chip uses the default I2C bus which is attached to pin 20/21. If you plan to connect to the IoT Cloud, you can't use these pins because it will interfere with the I2C bus.

Hopefully that was of any help and good luck with the project!

1 Like
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Thank you for clearing this up for me.