In this article we take a look at a development board that may be ideal for people who want to get started with an Arduino, its called the Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino.
Lets take a look at the kit, here is the one that I purchased
Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino
As you can see in the middle you have the arduino board and then by default all of the sensors and grove modules surround it and are connected.
What is Grove?
Grove is a modular, standardized connector prototyping system. Grove is a building block approach to assembling electronics which makes it easier to connect and build than traditional wired and solder based approaches.
The Grove system consists of a base unit and various modules with standardized connectors.
In the image above you can see the standard size of modules and the same connectors
Arduino
The main arduino is called the Seeeduino Lotus which is your standard ATMEGA328 Microcontroller development board. It is a combination of a Arduino and a Grove Base Shield.
The Seeeduino Lotus has 14 digital input/outputs and 7 analog input/outputs, it also has 12 Grove connections
Sensors and modules
There are 10 sensors and modules in this kit. Lets take a look at what you get
| Grove – LED : This is a standard led module which is connected to D4. You can actually change the led as it is fitted to a 2 pin socket, handy if you want to select a different colored LED. |
| Grove – Buzzer : A piezo buzzer module connected to D5 |
| Grove – OLED Display 0.96 : This is a a monochrome(white) 128×64 pixels passive display matrix module which is driven by a SSD1315 chip. This is an I2C device. |
| Grove – Button : A push button connected to D6 |
| Grove – Rotary Potentiometer : This is connected to A0 |
| Grove – Light : This module contains a a light dependent resistor to detect the intensity of light and is connected to A6 |
| Grove – Sound : This module contains a L358 amplifier and an electret microphone and is connected to A2 |
| Grove – Temperature & Humidity Sensor : This is a DHT11 which is a solid and stable sensor commonly used on beginners shields and is connected to D3 |
| Grove – Air Pressure Sensor : This is a Bosch BMP280 high-precision and low-power digital barometer which is connected to the I2C pins. You can also get temperature readings via this sensor. |
| Grove – 3-Axis Accelerator : This is a MMA7660FC 3-Axis Digital Accelerometer which is an I2C device |
Kit Information
By default the modules are all connected to the Seeduino Lotus but if you want you can snap these off to use with other microcontrollers.
You also get 6 grove cables which you can use if you disconnect the modules as stated above or had other grove modules that you wanted to connect. There are 300 modules available – so plenty to choose from and of course you can design your own modules as well.
There is a very thorough 70 page document online with a variety information such as downloading and setting up the Arduino IDE with 10 lessons and 2 projects – its a very good document.
You can see from our list of modules that are present and the pins that are used there are other
Purchasing
Here are various links to buy this product, this costs about $20 and is excellent value for what you get
Amazon Link |
| Seedstudio |
Summary
This is an excellent kit which is great value for money, it has very well written documentation which is great to see.
You can break off the modules and connect to other devices – there are grove interafces for Linkits, Beaglebone, Micro:bit and Raspberry Pi. The fact you have a few harnesses means you can use these.
I'll be looking at this kit and have several examples in future articles.
