Tinkerkit Braccio shield v4 - documentation

Projects Discussion and Showcase Robotics
1

I have just assembled and am playing with the Tinkerkit Braccio robotic arm:

https://store.arduino.cc/usa/tinkerkit-braccio

I can move the robotic arm with the braccio library from github.

My problem is that, there does not seem to be documentation online for the Braccio shield. A sample of what it looks like is below ( V3 of the Braccio shield, although I have V4 ):

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Alas, tinkerkit is no longer a company, the closest that I can find is from web.archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140723083944/http://www.tinkerkit.com/getting-started/

.. but still not the documentation for the shield itself, like:

  • What can I do with I0 to I5 ?
  • What is that green pin for ?
  • What about the serial pin ... can it be used to move the servo motors via commands sent from computer's tty0 to the shield ( and what are the possible serial commands and their format ) ?

Would be great if anyone did have a copy of the documentation before tinkerkit went bust.

2

The middle pins of the I0..I5 connectors are connected to the A0..A5 pins of the Arduino, so you can do whatever you can do with Arduino's A0..A5. You may want to refer to this forum topic for using these pins as digital inputs.

The other pins of these connectors are ground (Pin1) and +5V (Pin3).

The green connector is labeled TWI and should be usable as TWI (a.k.a I²C). The pins are:

  • Ground
  • +5V
  • SDA
  • SCL

For the curious: the SDA and SCL pins are not directly connected to Arduino's TWI pins. Instead, a very tiny chip (located next to the I4 connector) buffers between the green connector and the Arduino pins SDA and SCL.
See Wire - Arduino Reference for more information on using TWI on the Arduino.

The yellow connector labeled SERIAL uses the pins as follows:

  • Ground
  • +5V
  • Tx
  • Rx

Here, the Tx and Rx are directly connected to the corresponding Arduino pins.
See Serial - Arduino Reference for more information on programming the serial port.

IMPORTANT: All these pins are 5V pins. You should NOT connect these directly to 3V3 only devices like a RaspberryPi. Also interfacing the serial connector to a standard RS232 (usually DB9 connector) needs a 5V to RS232 level converter. Do NOT connect a RS232 port (e.g. from a PC) directly to these pins. You could however use a USB to serial adapter with 5V outputs.

DISCLAIMER: I did neither try out these connections nor do I have access to any additional information. I found the connections described here by checking the board with a multimeter.