Hercules controller sensor input questions

After reading the wiki entry for the Hercules controller, I’m left with a few questions. Basically, the Hercules platform seems to be absolutely perfect for my new project, except that I will require a decent amount of sensors to accomplish my goal. I don’t have any experience with grove connectors and limited Arduino experience (have a project completed succesfully but it was of limited scope), so I apologize for the questions.

  1. Are the 5 “servo connectors” mentionned Headware Overview (section C) on the diagram actually regular 5v digital pins that can be used for input as well?

  2. On the schematics, there is a Grove connector that’s labelled as D11 and D12… Which is the same labels as two of the separate pins from section c. Does this mean that you are actually unable to use those pins from Section B (Grove connectors) and Section C (‘servo’ connectors) at the same time?

  3. Are you able to use the RX/TX grove connector instead for a Grove Digital Sensor? How about the SCL/SDA grove connector? The A0/A1 grove connector is the only Analog port on the board, correct?

  4. Not sensor question. The Hercules Chassis and Control Card does not come with any capabilities to use a USB cable to program the board, correct? Something like seeedstudio.com/depot/USB-To … Path=19_88 would be required I assume?

Thank you in advance for your answers!

hi, thanks for using Hercules!
sorry for the delay, if any problem else you can send me a email: luweicong@seeedstudio.com, then you can get the answer soon.

  1. the servo pin is just normal pin, you can use it as Input or Output
  2. yes, you can’t use the same pin twice!
  3. RX/TX can be used as digital pin, SDA, SCL is actually A4, A5, you can use it as analog pin
  4. yes, you need a usb->uart modules.