Piicodev Light Sensor

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Hey guys - I just added a Piicodev Light sensor to my RP4 (working great, thanks) and I also need to add a small display screen hat to the Pi. Is there is any way to set up the Piico light sensor with a USB to TTL serial cord instead of using the adapter, or wired into the adapter ?

Cheers,
Tom

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The PiicoDev Ambient Light Sensor (VEML6030) is a I2C device. You’re free to use any other connected hardware so long as you can make the connection.

What display are you thinking of using? we may be able to find a way to connect the light sensor along side it.

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Thanks for the reply Michael. Your videos are great btw.
I have a small Elecrow 3.5 inch HDMI Display. I don’t mind purchasing a different kind of display, but I need it to be the same size.

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Hey Tom,

Most HAT’s don’t use all of the available GPIO pins. If you could find more information on the HAT your using (a pinout description would be preferred) that could use that to check what pins are unused to make sure no pin conflicts exist.

From what I can find just using a USB to TTL serial cable may give you some issues as the I2C communication protocol doesn’t play nice over USB directly. Usually people get around this by using a microcontroller to translate.

I Found this example using a Raspberry Pi Pico interesting:

Hope this helps!

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Hey Samuel,
Thanks for the reply. The Elecrow User Manual doesn’t list specifically which pins. I can see that the hat doesn’t utilise pins 27 to 40. The Pico idea is interesting.
Cheers,
T

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