Using Stalker as shiled on Seeeduino Mega

Products & Technology Arduino & Seeeduino
#1

Hi all,

I’ll give you a brief overview of what I’m doing, then ask some technical questions.

I’m trying to put together a system to:

  • Log data from four temperature sensors
  • Possibly log from a pH probe
  • Act as a thermostat - controlling a pump
  • Log data from a water flow meter (when the pump is running)

I spoke to someone about using the stalker for this, and decided to stack it onto a Mega to eliminate resource issues.

Since then, I have bought the Stalker, Mega, Solar Charging Shield and battery, and the Uart_sb. I have been able to upload sketches to the Mega, but not directly to the stalker. I have to do the reset button trick to uplod to the mega but the same does not apply to the stalker. I get the ‘programmer is not responding’ message. I am trying to use the Mega as a host by the way - I was just playing around trying to upload to the stalker.

I’ve soldered pin headers onto the stalker, so I can stack it on the mega, which works in terms of connecting all of the analogue and digital pins. The headers i used go straight through the holes next to the in/out pins and go directly into the mega in/out pins.

The problem I’ve found is that the IIC pins on the stalker do not line up with those on the mega - I’m guessing that they are supposed to but I have not stacked it correctly (soldered the wrong headers on or something). Also, even if the IIC lines up, I don’t see how they would connect - the documentation doesn’t say how to physically go about using the stalker as a shield - and as a first time user of these boards, I can’t figure it out.

Also, it does not say in the documentation how the SD card should be formatted and if there is any size limitation.

So my questions are:

  • Have i soldered the correct pin headers on?
  • Are the IIC pins supposed to line up (i guess so)?
  • How are the IIC pins meant to be connected physically (i guess some sort of extra header) ?
  • Can I just connect the IIC pins with a lead and not bother stacking the stalker on the mega - or is there other functionality that requires all of the in/out pins to be connected?
  • Is there a size limit for SD cards and what formatting do I need?

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Iain

#2

Hi,

Looking at things again, I had got mixed up as to where the I2C was on each board. I can now see that I’ve got so solder a header on the Mega and get some kind of I2C bus to connect the two.

I’m still confused about the SD card size litits and formatting though. And I still have the problem of not being able to upload to the stalker. I’m worried that it’s faulty.

Thanks again,

Iain