Hi, I'm a n00b here. Forgive the stupidity of my question.
I just got and installed a motor shield (it's the one by DK electronics, but looks like a copy of the adafruit shield - looks identical to this : Arduino Playground - AdafruitMotorShield ). Anyway, got it installed to the arduino, works great, had it driving a car around with a battery pack. However, I don't really see a way to plug jumpers into my digital pins, because the shield's pins are using up all of my pins. For example, if I want to hook up a prox sensor, I have no idea how. It looks like the actual arduino-brand shield still has plug-ins for your jumpers, but this DK/Adafruit one does not. Is my only option to solder to the "stumps" sticking out the top of the shield?
That shield uses almost every pin indeed.
But you can use A0 to A5 (the analog pins).
And pin 2 and 13 are not used by it.
If no servo motors are connected, you can also use pin 9 and 10.
Thanks for the reply Peter, but how do I plug into these pins? I realise they aren't "used" per se. I.e, no, I'm not using a servo, so how do I physically plug into 9/10? Or do I have to solder to the "stumps"?
And of course, you're right about the analog pins. I've just been more comfortable (in my limited experience) in using the digital ones.
There should be a hole somewhere to solder a wire to pin 2.
The analog pins are connected to the holes in the corner. It think it is a row of GND, a row of 5V and a row with A0 to A5.
You can use the analog pins as digital pins : pinMode (A0, OUTPUT);
The analog part is just an extra, beside that they are like normal digital pins.
Thanks again! In retrospect, I probably should have bought the arduino branded shield, since I still have easy jumper-style plug-ins, for whatever unused pins still exist.
