Can I use Data Logger Shield with Arduino Sensor shield V5.0?

Question

so I did a little research on this but the answer to my particular problem did not exist.

I have a data logger shield created by deek robot (deek-robot.com) which seems pretty similar to adafruits data logger shield so I assume they would use the same pins, about this one I can research and find the pins.

but in case of the sensor shield I could not find anything specially since there is no reference on the manufacturer on the board and only referred to as "Arduino Sensor Shield V5.0",as this is a shield for sensors and has almost every pin available on it I would assume it can use most of the data pins and depends on which pins I connect.

Now my question is that can I use these shields together if I want to use those digital pins already used by the data logger? or I can use them together only if I leave out the digital pins 10 to 13 out of use on my sensor shield?

Answer 1

The 'data logging' shield by Adafruit and Deek Robot has two devices.

First device is the SD card which uses SPI bus. Every SPI device on the SPI bus has to have a select pin CS. On this shield the SD card has pin 10 as the CS pins.

The second device on the data logger shield is a RTC clock. The RTC clock is on the I2C bus.

So the data logger shield uses the I2C pins, the SPI pins and a pin for CS. Arduino in Uno and Mega R3 form factor have the SPI as a 2x3 header and the I2C pins SDA and SCL are last two pins on the header near the USB connector.

On Uno the data logging shield uses pin 10 as CS, 11, 12, 13 as SPI and A4, A5 as I2C.

If you have the version of the data logging shield which can be used on boards other than Uno, then:

• On Mega it uses pin 10 as CS, 50, 51, 52 as SPI and 20, 21 as I2C.
• On Leonardo it uses pin 10 as CS, 2, 3 as I2C (and the SPI pins which are only on the SPI header).
• On Arduino Zero the shield uses pin 10 as CS, 11, 12, 13 as SPI (and the I2c pins are only on the SDA/SCL header).

The 'sensor shield' doesn't have any devices. So it makes no difference in pins usage. With or without the 'sensor shield' if you have the 'data logging' shield attached, you can use only the pins not used by the 'data logging' shield.

Since SPI and I2C are a bus, you can wire additional SPI devices to the SPI pins and additional I2C devices to the I2C pins, but you can't use these pins for anything else if they are configured for the bus.