PB Friends, @JasonCoon gave me a great tip on using JST XH connectors to quickly add/remove items from a PixelBlaze v3 without limiting boards by soldering on an expansion pack. He’s showing a setup here with 4 pins soldered to the v3:
This seems like a great way to be able to add & remove sensor boards. He’s got a 4 pin JST connector here. It looks like this sacrifices the TX pin. I can’t think of any reason why I’d really use that pin. I suppose it’d be safer to use an 8pin JST connector just in case I needed to break out those other wires, but do you see any downsides to using either the 4 pin or 8 pin JST on my boards?
We do plan some large-ish installations - archways of lights folks can walk under, a field of LED lights that are animated, etc. I want students to be able to be creative for a campus “Festival of Lights” with some outdoor LED fun, but I’m really super-new to all of this so I’m not embarrassed and in fact welcome to be talked through thinking like I’m a n00b.
It looks like the sensor board doesn’t have distance sensor. We use STEMMA-QT Time of Flight sensors (VL53L1X). I’d love to be able to connect those to the PB or Sensor Unit (again I don’t know where to begin to think about this) and receive sensor readings to pump into the animations so things like archways & sculptures could react to proximity. I assume these plans aren’t impacted by the JST choice, but wanted to mention just in case. Thanks!
2 Likes
Regarding the TX pin, if you ever needed it, you could just trim the leg of the JST-XH header back. Then you’d be able to solder a wire or header to it.
1 Like