Noob here, question about shields

Projects General Guidance
1

Hey guys.
I'm new to arduino, been messing with it like crazy though, liking it.
I have the Uno and I bought a motor shield from seeed for it.
I was able to find the code and it works, cool, great.

My question is, the shield takes up all the pins/connections on the arduino.
How the heck to I add anything else to it?
A motor shield is great, but I have essentially turned the arduino into a motor controller only by using the shield.

What if I wanted to add something like a temp module? or a Bluetooth module to control it from my iphone?
There are no more connections/pins available to connect the BT module.

Any help or straighten me out would be appreciated.
Thanks.

PS, this motor shield allows me to control like 14 motors...way more then I need at any point (as of now anyway), any other suggestions?

2

Got a link to the shield?
It might be that not all pins are used exclusively - for example, if it uses I2C to receive commands, than it receives an address to respond to, and other I2C devices can be added that respond to their own address as well.
You could also use a shield that controls fewer motors, such as the 2-motor shield that ruggedcircuits.com offers.
Or use an arduino equivalent like my '1284P card that offers 10 additional IO, or a '2560 Mega that offers 54 IO total.
Cross Roads Electronics

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3

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/motor-shield-p-913.html