I'm trying to use a dfrobot gravity shield with my nano rp 2040 to connect a gravity liquid level sensor. When disconnected from the shield, blink works fine, and so does the code that would connect the level to the serial monitor. When connected to the shield, the Arduino disconnects from my PC and stops running blink, and closes the serial port. I am only powering this with USB from the PC and have moved the jumper on gnd to the servo power select jumper as stated in the wiki page for the shield. Is my shield toast? Or am I doing something wrong? how can I troubleshoot further or do something different? here is the link to the shield; Arduino Nano IO Sensor Shield -DFRobot
Thanks for any help, I am very new to this and am still trying to figure things out!
That shield is for an Arduino Nano which is something completely different from the Nano RP 2040. The Nano runs on 5V, the Nano RP2040 on 3.3V, they use a different processor and use different signaling voltages.
Why do you have the servo voltage jumper installed? Do you have something connected to the shield?
Do you have the APC jumpers installed on the shield?
I am just wanting to use the shield for ease of plug-and-play for the gravity connectors, in the instructions it states that when being powered solely by USB to move the jumper there. I have tried with both tx and rx apc jumpers installed and uninstalled, doesn't seem to change much. I do see now that the rp2040 has more digital pins than regular nano but don't understand why plugging into the shield prevents any program from operating on the nano. this happens when no sensors are plugged in and when they are plugged in. Thanks
No, didn't realize pinout would be different enough to cause issues, figured nano = nano, am a noob ig. Looking at it more doesn't seem compatible as is, is it possible to just modify it somehow by disabling the analog pins that don't match? i literally only need the gravity connector pass-throughs on the digital pins aha
Lots of different types of nano these days. It has changed to a description of the form factor rather than a specific type.
Well as you are getting a short circuit then it is probable that the answer involves cutting tracks on the shield and making wire links.
The closest you can get to disabling a pin is to make it an input, and all pins are input by default after a reset. As inputs are very high impedance then they will not create a short circuit.
That does power the whole shield by the USB power. If you draw too much power from the USB port your PC might disable it. Remove all jumpers and try again.
But the gravity hardware is built for 5V devices. You will damage your board if you connect such a sensor to that shield even if you get it running without anything connected.
After looking and testing pin by pin it seems one of the problems is the shield links the reset pins together causing to get stuck in reset. Why is the board made this way or am i coming to the wrong conclusion here?
i figured out that the rp2040 has only one reset pin whereas the regular nano has 2 reset pins, the other pin is a rec pin so it was connecting the rec pin and the reset pin, i drilled out the connection and solders the 5v pad on the rp2040 and all gravity connectors are working when attached to the shield