Grove-to-grove 5v-to-3v3 bidirectional i2c-or-uart level shifter

Products & Technology New Product Ideas
#1

Hello. My company builds a communications peripheral (cellular) that has two interfaces - i2c and uart. On our module the user can select between 1v8 and 3v3 vio levels.

I have recently discovered your Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino, which is a TRULY WONDERFUL product that we’d love to include as a part of our core developer kit. I absolutely love the design and how you don’t even need to “snap out” the modules to make it work. Fantastic job, guys.

However, this is a 5V logic board and so during prototyping I’ve had to hack my own level shifters on a breadboard. I don’t look forward to the prospect of spinning a one-off custom board just for this use. Either of these two solutions would be ideal:

  1. A tiny Grove-to-Grove board, perhaps based on the TXB0102 or PCA9306 that does nothing but grove level translation - either 1v8/3v3 on the “low” side, and 3v3/5.0 on the “high” side.

  2. A version of the Grove beginner kit, with some reasonable MOQ, that integrates a TXB0104 and allows a jumper-selectable option to convert the Lotus’s two UART and I2C grove connectors into 3V3? I know that you already have a 3v3 reference voltage on the board.

Thoughts?

Thanks for your consideration

Ray

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#2

I would like to build on this four-year-old request. With 3.3V microcontrollers now being very common, and several versions of Grove shields supporting them, it seems we could benefit from more options for managing voltage differences.

I recently created a separate post requesting a 3V servo specifically, but after seeing Ray’s post, I realize the issue is broader. There aren’t enough resources available to create 3V analogs of popular 5V Grove sensors and actuators.

It would be great to have either a switch or a set of jumpers on the shields to configure the voltage for the connected device. The value proposition of the Grove ecosystem is “plug-and-play,” and this feature would enhance that convenience with minimal effort on the user’s part.

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#3
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#4

I hate to recomend another company product but take a look at this

as you may know the voltage is going lower to support smaller and smaller electronics that cannot support the 5v because the internal traces are too small

#5

Hi there,
Nah’ the request is too old, but the IDEA is SPOT on… Seeed 3.3v Xiao compatible.
:+1:
GL :slight_smile: PJ :v: