Tutorial: How to use Me Angular Sensor in mBlock

[Walter]

Hello Makeblock Community!

Everything I show you, I have tried for myself, on the Me Auriga, Me Orion and the MegaPi Shield for RJ25.
Although I wouldn’t recommend the MegaPi for mBlock, since it isn’t fully compatible with mBlock.

Recently I got the Me Angular Sensor and wanted to use it in mBlock.
Since I couldn’t find any information on how to do this, I spent a whole weekend on figuring this out, by myself.
Perhaps this information is useful to others, who also want to use Me Angular Sensor in mBlock.
I am still very new to mBlock/Scratch/Arduino/electronics, so I am very grateful to anybody, who points out any mistakes/errors I have made.

First you need to connect Me Angular Sensor to Me RJ25 Adapter.
You can connect up to two Me Angular Senors to one single Me RJ25 Adapter.
Best is to the establish a connection between your board (i.e. Auriga, Orion, or Megapi) and the
mBlock-program, before you connect the RJ25 Adapter with the board.
You need to connect to a port on the board with black color indicator, since its an analog sensor you want to connect, and black is the color for analog ports.
In my example I will always use port 6, since is a black port on all 3 boards (Auriga, Orion, MegaPi) I have tried.

In the mBlock-program, you have to enable the Arduino Extension, like in the picture above.

.

Then you can use the “read analog pin (A)” block in your program.

How to find out the value to use in the “read analog pin (A)” block:

That’s very easy if you have the pinout for your board.

So here are the pinout for the Me Auriga, Me Orion, and for the MegaPi Shield.
I have marked the relevant analog pin numbers for port 6, on every picture, as an example.

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So for our example you have connected the Me RJ25 Adapter to port 6 on your board.
If you use the Me Auriga:
You use the value “10” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 1 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.
And you use the value “15” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 2 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.

If you use the Orion:
You use the value “2” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 1 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.
And you use the value “3” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 2 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.

If you use the MegaPi Shield:
You use the value “8” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 1 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.
And you use the value “9” as input for the “read analog pin (A)” block in your mBlock-program to read the Sensor connected to slot 2 on the Me RJ25 Adapter.

How to map the Me Angular Sensor in mBlock:
After you have successfully connected the Me Angular Sensor to your board and mBlock,
you will find that it only outputs values from 0 to 1023, and not the 0 to 330 degrees its made for.
So to get the correct values from your Sensor you have to use this formula. I think its
pretty much self explanatory, but:
IN_MIN is the lowest value you can get from your Sensor,
IN_MAX is the highest value you can get from your Sensor,
OUT_MIN is the lowest value you want to use for measurement,
OUT_MAX is the highest value you want to use for measurement.

.
.
Sensor Value Mapping Function.sb2 (48.6 KB)

Now you should have a Angular Sensor that shows the correct values in mBlock.
I hope this information will be a help, to anybody who wants to use the Angular sensor in mBlock.

[tech_support]

Great Job! Walter

[ALx]

Right, how do we do that in mBlock 5 @tech_support ?

[tech_support]

Me angular sensor is not supported by mBlock 5. We will feedback to the software team.

[ALx]

What about the RJ25 adapter support in general? It’s part of the Ultimate 2.0 set but I can’t see it in the extension library in mBlock 5 @tech_support ? Thanks.

[tech_support]

Hi ALx,

Actually, there is no program block special for the RJ25 adapter since it is just a transfer module. But it doesn’t affect the normal use of the electronic modules which connected to the Megapi board via the RJ25 adapter. As you can see the picture with the program block, the ultrasonic sensor connected to megapi via the MegaPi RJ25 adater on specific port.

[ALx]

Thanks for quick answer. What I wanted to achieve is to use the RJ25 adapter to drive some custom LEDs for a project I’m building (turn LEDs on and off). I’m using Auriga (mBot Ranger). What would be your recommendation?

[tech_support]

Hi ALx,

Do you usethis adapter?

If yes, there is some program blocks for some makeblock parts like servo,LED strip which need connect to the mainboard with the RJ25 adapter. But you need add the makers platform refer to the picture guiding below:

If you use the other brand LED, I am not sure if it works properly, but you can give a try.

[henplo]

But there is no block with read digital or analog value at pin (…) ?

[tech_support]

Hi henplo,
You can make a variable and set the variable to the value of sensors.
Then you can let the sprites to say the value of sensor by variable.
Hope I have explained it clearly.
Thanks.

[henplo]

yes, I know how to set variables. That’s not the problem. What I want to know is if there is a function to read an analog or digital pin in Mblock5. Like in the program above. Then I could simply read the values from the angular sensor.
https://forum.makeblock.com/uploads/default/original/2X/a/a14185e9593811c2392b28eb397707ddfa3cc782.JPG

[tech_support]

Hi henplo,
I’m sorry there is no blocks to read the digital or analog value at pin in mBlock5.
I will feedback this request to our product manager to check if we can add it.
Thanks.

[OutoftheBOTS]

I have quickly made an extension to read and write to pins in mblock5. download here https://github.com/OutOfTheBots/Makeblock_extenstions/blob/master/pin.mext

If you are using digital read or write then you will need to use the setup block first to either setup the pin as an input or output depending on whether you want to read or write.

There is a digital read and an analog read too but for analog read you don’t need to setup the pin first