Connecting an external sensor to the Pysense

[linucks]

Hi,

I'm a programmer, but a complete newbie to electronics and have a wipy 3/pysense. I'd like to attach an external sensor (HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor) to the pysense, but have no clue how to do this. How do I attach the relevant wires from the HC-SR04 to the pysense board? There doesn't appear to be any way of connecting wires to the pysense board other then soldering them to the top of the wipy pins, or soldering directly into the header io holes on the pysense board, both of which seem like a terrible idea.

Do I need another attachment, like a breakout board, or some specialist pins or...? Sorry if this is a really simple question but like I said I'm a complete noob and couldn't find any tutorials or pictures out there.

Thanks for any help!

[robert-hh]

@linucks The pysense is not really made for connecting external sensors. But below the connector for the WiPy 3 there is a 10 pin connection area which give some access to WiPy pins. See https://docs.pycom.io/datasheets/boards/pysense/
At least Pins 7 and 8, which are connected to P10 and P11, should be usable, Pins 9 and 10 are connected to P4 and P8. As long as you do not use the SD card, you can use them too.

[linucks]

This post is deleted!

[linucks]

@robert-hh Thanks for your reply. So if I understand you correctly you're saying that it's possible to use the 10 holes of the External IO Header. How do I use them though? I'm assuming I don't solder directly into the board, so is there some kind of expansion socket with header pins (I'm guessing that's what they're called) that I can buy that slots into those 10 holes? Or are there standardised connectors that somehow slot in

[robert-hh]

@linucks Whatever you like. You can solder an angled 10 double row pin header into the holes, or two 5 pin single row angled headers, whatever matches best physically. I personally would prefer the 2x5 angled male pin header version, placed at the bottom side.