Music Shield digital pins question

End-Of-Life Products & Services Tech support before 2012
#1

Hi guys,

I’m a newbie, so apologies if I’m doing it all wrong. I’ve got my music shield several days ago and since then trying to figure what digital pins it uses and what’s left. I need to wire 6 buttons in my project which means I need at least 5 digital in’s. I was looking through the docs with board design pictures and at the board itself, but can’t figure what’s unused. There are some pins (1 and 10-13) that look vacant, but still labeled (10-13).

If it uses all of digital pins, is there a way I could share them somehow? Also, since I don’t need control buttons (volume, rew, play etc), could I hook on to them somehow?

Cheers,

  • A
#2

Hi,
You can use D3-D9 if you don’t want to use the on board button, switch, and LEDs.

Regards,
Steve

#3

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the suggestion. Any way you could recommend doing this without soldering? If there isn’t that’s ok, I just wanted to minimize the changes to the board and the shield.

Cheers,

  • A
#4

Well, it seems a little bit difficult to solder if you are using Arduino.
But it becomes much easier if you are using Seeeduino as it has another parallel pins.

Regards,
Steve

#5

Yup, I’m a happy owner of Seeeduino v2.21. I was thinking of grabbing a larger protoboard at a local store, soldering the connectors onto it and between the main board and the shield. I would then solder another connector on the side for easier pins access. Yes, some extra height, but no modification to either main board or music shield. Looks like a nice and clean solution. We’ll see.

Thanks for the answers!