Serial UART positions on MKR Family

Official Hardware MKR Family MKR WiFi 1010
1

Hello,

I am wanting to make a shield to suit MKR products, and the thing I am trying to connect uses a UART, and I am trying to establish if the TX/RX pins marked on the MKR family products is actually available on all MKR Arduinos, and not used internally.

The reason I ask is, looking at the schematic for the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 for example, the TX/RX pins which go to the main headers, also goes to the u-Blox chip. Does that mean the u-Blox will be utilising the TX/RX pins and therefore they are not available to the TX/RX marked pins?

Schematic-MKRWiFi1010
Schematic-MKRWiFi10101725×1167 484 KB

So if I made a shield to tap into the TX/RX marked pins, then it wouldn't be compatible with this MKR board, right?

But then others like the MKR Zero, don't have anything on those pins, so it would work fine.

I have not used a MKR product yet, and the chip seems to have potentially mappable UARTs to other pins, but that doesn't help in the case of a shield unless I have jumpers to select another pin to use I guess. I really want to capture the ability to use all of them, but given this UART query I am just trying to pull in some more info.

We had a contact at Arduino but they have fallen silent for about 2 weeks now and are not responding, potentially on holiday or something, so hoping someone knows here.

Can someone please just confirm this with the UART and some MKR boards using the UART internally like on the u-Blox parts etc, therefore making the TX/RX pins not usable by shields?

Thanks

2

The schematic does show the UART pins going to the NINA and header pins. You might be able to use the UART on the header if the NINA is shutdown, but then what's the point of getting one if you can't use it. The MKR Zero SERCOM is flexible though when it comes to re-mapping UART pins. I think you can have up to six UART if you configure all.

006
0061570×1467 225 KB

These pins can potentially be configured as UART