Using Wipy 2.0 Without expansion Board

[Tomjuarez]

Hello, i recently bougth a Wipy 2.0 but i forgot to buy an expansion board, is there any way to use it without it?

[Xykon]

The easiest way to use it would be with a 3.3V FTDI cable or breakout board.

Rather than linking to an old post I decided to try and give a more detailed description:

You need an ftdi or cp2102 based USB <-> UART adapter. The voltage on the TXD and RXD pins must be 3.3V (using a 5V uart adapter will destroy the module!).

You need to connect the TXD port on the UART module to P0 and the RXD pin to P1 on the WiPy. Additionally you need to connect GND on the adapter to GND on the WiPy.

Finally you need to power the WiPy. Depending on the type of UART adapter you have, it will either have dedicated 3.3V and 5V power pins. In this case I suggest you connect 5V to the VIN port on the WiPy. Some modules only have one power pin. In this case I suggest you check the voltage with a multimeter first. If it is 3.3V you can try to connect this to the 3.3V power pin on the WiPy, but the module might not be able to provide enough current for the WiPy to run properly.

If you are not 100% certain what you're doing it is very easy to destroy the module by applying incorrect voltages, and even if you do it can still happen. If you want to spare yourself the disappointment of seeing your module go up in magic smoke I suggest you wait for the expansion board to arrive.

If you do have some experience using FTDI cables then this pinout diagram should be a big help: https://forum.pycom.io/topic/190/wipy-pinout

One last thing worth noting is to not confuse UART and RS232. A USB <-> RS232 adapter will NOT work.

[bucknall]

@Xykon @Tomjuarez Please remember to check the voltage of the FTDI cable. It states that it is 3v3 but the VCC pin is actually at 5 V, confusingly!

I have made this mistake and it may destroy your device!

Thanks!

Alex