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buttons for a device powered by Gizmo 2?

Former Member

For a device I’m building which is powered by a Gizmo 2 I need two buttons (left and right, for choosing a media file).

How can I add buttons to Gizmo? Are there pins usable for that, or should I use something like an Arduino (Nano) connected to the Gizmo via USB?

  • 0

    Hi Mark,

     

    You can do as you say, interface via a USB device. That is probably the easiest approach. Alternatively there is an explorer boardexplorer board which you can use.

  • 0

    Hello Mark,

     

    yes you can use them (despite the software). has done a great job on Gizmo2 and she suggested me many good tricks for the Gizmo2 usage.

     

    Supposing you are using a Linux based platform (maybe good Ubuntu or Debian) in theory all that is needed to know about the GPIO and PIN availability is written in the Gizmo2 User Guide, edition 2015 (maybe the only available) that you find in the link above.

    On page 7 of the guide you see the following image:

    image

    On the boom of the image you see the two connectors High Speed Expansion Port and the Low Speed Expansion Port. These are strange connectors and seems something to be used to plug the board in some sort of bus. In fact these are the ports you need; it is true that these resemble a a PCIe 36-pin card edge connector and a PCIe x4 card edge connector but the pinout is totally custom.

    The low speed connector is used for the standard GPIO digital pins, low speed USB2 connectors, PWM fan etc.  while the high speed is for Display signals, SATA and other high speed protocol.

     

    To connect the buttons you should use a couple of digital I/O of the GPIO pins as listed in the manual starting from page 12. I suggest to avoid soldering directly the pins but buy a insertion connector as I have done as these two ports are really precious image

     

    The following images shows the two connectors and the same plugged in the Gizmo2 card edges.

    imageimage

     

    Enrico

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member in reply to balearicdynamics

    hah! I just went native and soldered directly to the card edge connector!!

     

    As Enrico says, if you use a standard Linux distro, there is information in one of my blog posts about using the gpio, you will need to download and compile the gpio device overlay. once that is done,gpio control is as simple as it is on the raspi and bbb.

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    Hi Lucie!

     

    Following your suggestions I have searched for this connectors as the same Gizmo will be used for different prototype tests before buying the final ones so it is not the worth to solder the cables directly to it. The rest is just following your suggestions image

     

    Cheers. Enrico