Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 3Add power connections to the TelosB and tap into the serial line
Get ready for modifying one of your boards with the red wire in the picture (or blue wire or whatever 30 gauge wire you have). First, cut off the 2AA battery pack that comes attached to the board. The board is going to instead get power from the datalogger shield, and the battery pack covers up areas you need to modify.
Find the 3V and ground connections on the TelosB and solder a socket to these. The 3V and ground are labeled with pink labels on the modified TelosB (on the right in the second photo). You will later plug in jumper wires here to give the TelosB power from the Adafruit data logger shield.
Look for the Tx line from the MSP430 processor on the TelosB, and use an X-Acto to scrape off the green soldermask and expose some copper. Heat the copper with a soldering iron and melt some solder onto it.
Remove insulation from 1/16" (1.5 mm) of a 4-inch length of 30 gauge wire (wire-wrap wire). Then apply solder to the exposed wire. Remove about 0.5" of insulation from the other end.
Clip the soldered wire to the soldered copper pad using reversing tweezers and heat with the iron. They should melt and stick. The joint isn't very strong, so you can lace the wire through some unused holes on the TelosB to keep it from getting pulled off.
Solder about a 0.5 inch piece of 22-gauge wire to the free end of the 30 gauge wire and secure with heatshrink. This end is going to get plugged into Serial1 RX (pin 19) on the Arduino Mega. Maybe you could use a regular Arduino, but the Mega has 4 hardware serial ports instead of just 1. This makes it easy to use one of the Mega's serial ports for troubleshooting on a computer WHILE the TelosB communicates on another port.
(Besides the Adafruit logger, this method has successfully connected to the Sparkfun Logomatic--low power but no timestamp--and to a RN-41 Bluetooth modem)
Find the 3V and ground connections on the TelosB and solder a socket to these. The 3V and ground are labeled with pink labels on the modified TelosB (on the right in the second photo). You will later plug in jumper wires here to give the TelosB power from the Adafruit data logger shield.
Look for the Tx line from the MSP430 processor on the TelosB, and use an X-Acto to scrape off the green soldermask and expose some copper. Heat the copper with a soldering iron and melt some solder onto it.
Remove insulation from 1/16" (1.5 mm) of a 4-inch length of 30 gauge wire (wire-wrap wire). Then apply solder to the exposed wire. Remove about 0.5" of insulation from the other end.
Clip the soldered wire to the soldered copper pad using reversing tweezers and heat with the iron. They should melt and stick. The joint isn't very strong, so you can lace the wire through some unused holes on the TelosB to keep it from getting pulled off.
Solder about a 0.5 inch piece of 22-gauge wire to the free end of the 30 gauge wire and secure with heatshrink. This end is going to get plugged into Serial1 RX (pin 19) on the Arduino Mega. Maybe you could use a regular Arduino, but the Mega has 4 hardware serial ports instead of just 1. This makes it easy to use one of the Mega's serial ports for troubleshooting on a computer WHILE the TelosB communicates on another port.
(Besides the Adafruit logger, this method has successfully connected to the Sparkfun Logomatic--low power but no timestamp--and to a RN-41 Bluetooth modem)
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
 |
Add Comment
|
