How do I use Port 5?

BrickPi
1

I understand sensor port 5 is I2C, i don’t fully understand what that entails, can I still use it with the normal sensors?

I only have the kit that came with the NXT 2.0 set, and I’d like to use a touch sensor from port 5 (it will be a colour eventually, but that’s causing it’s own problems as it well known)

If so how do i access it? seeing how I can’t just declare it like normal

2

Hey keithnbrown, I don’t think that any of the sensors from the NXT 2.0 kit are purely I2C. So no, there’s no way to attach a color sensor to Port 5.

We have a few examples on using the Port 5 in our Python or C library. Which language are you using at the moment?

3

python, but if that’s the case with the colour sensor then the language doesn’t matter as I have no need for any of yours or hitechic sensors which would use i2c as my project relies on the sensors from the base set.

if the sensor is analogue is there no way to just grab raw data from port 5?

4

There is no way to do anything but I2C from Port5. We added that port in for digital communications directly from the Raspberry Pi; it connects a sensor directly to the I2C bus on the Pi.

So nope, there’s none of the other machinery needed to make other sensors work on Port 5. No A/D, no serial; only I2C.

5

Right, so what I thought would give me an extra sensor port versus an official NXT brick, really hasn’t. Annoying, but I understand why now.

What I originally thought was that for some reason you could only get four ports to work in a “normal” fashion due to a resource limitation, but had remaining resources over I2C to make a fifth work but in a slightly more complex fashion but still compatible with all official sensors and your own. but now I know that’s not the case back to the drawing board.