Wireing

How would i wire my Arduino Uno to a wixel without the sheild

Hello. There are many possible ways to wire a Wixel to an Arduino. What is your goal? --David

I just found the information you left in another thread:

Do you want to be able to program your robot wirelessly? If so, you should probably just look at the Wixel Shield for Arduino schematic and recreate that. If not, there are simpler ways you can hook up the Wixel.

–David

No it for now just needs to be able to communicate serially so I can controll it from my computer through the arduino serial monitor from a distance

But if later I wanted to add the programming functionality I noticed on the shield specs it reqiures mosfets resistors diodes buttons and smt jumpers what are the specifications for these parts

But let’s start with just for serial arduino wireless communication

To achieve wireless communication, you should first learn about the Arduino’s SoftwareSerial library. Basically you can use it to make any of your Arduino’s pins be a new TX/RX pair for serial communication. Then you can hook the Arduino up to the Wixel by following the instructions in the “Connecting a Microcontroller via TTL Serial” section of the Wixel User’s Guide.

–David

Does the wixel and arduino use the same 3v3 serial or does the arduino use 5v and how would i compensate for that also what power level should i use 5v or 3v3 as the input as the arduino has both i looked at the diagram and it made me more confused

doesn’t the rx have to be converted to 5v to work like how the tx is downgraded(with resistors) (from the arduino)

cant i just hook it up to the existing rx and tx pins

will i have to invert the signal

please help im so confused

also if later i wanted to add wireless programming without the shield would i be able to do it.

The Arduino UNO’s microcontroller runs at 5 V so it uses 5 V serial.

To compensate for that, you need a voltage divider between the Arduino’s transmit line and the Wixel’s receive line, as shown in the user’s guide.

What are you are confused about? I’m not sure what you are trying to use the 5V or 3V3 line for. If you want to power the Wixel from the Arduino, you can connect the 5V line to the Wixel’s VIN pin. Feel free to draw out your connections and post a schematic here so we can check it.

No. According to the DC Characteristcs table of ATmega328p (the VIH row), the Arduino’s inputs should interpret any signal above 3 V as high, so it should work just fine to connect the Arduino’s software serial receive line to the Wixel’s TX line.

No, I do not recommend hooking the Wixel up to the Arduino’s TX and RX pins because those pins are connected to the on-board USB-to-serial adapter, which complicates things a lot. We had to think very carefully about how to get that to work when were designing the shield.

You will not have to invert the signal because the Wixel and Arduino both use non-inverted serial.

Yes, but it would take a lot of effort because you’d have to duplicate what we’ve done on the Wixel Shield for Arduino. Why not just get that shield and use it? It sounds like you’re not really sure what to do. The shield has all the necessary connection built into it so it is much harder to screw up.

–David