How to connect a analog sensor to the Estimote Location Beacon?

1

I have a sensor like this one (temperature or light sensor):

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sensor.jpg1492×993 413 KB

I want to connect it to the Estimote Location Beacon and get the data. I have tried connecting it like this:
GND sensor pin to GND Beacon pin
VCC sensor pin to Vcc IN Beacon pin
OUT sensor pin to GPIO0 Beacon pin

How do I need to set up GPIO0 pin from the mobile app? I have tried all the app options from the GPIO0 but I was unable to read any data from the sensor.

What is the correct way to read data from such a sensor?

2

You need to:

  • connect Sensor’s VCC to a battery/power [“plus”] (consult the Sensor’s specs/docs to learn what exact voltage/current you need)
  • connect both Sensor’s GND and Beacon’s GND to the battery’s/power’s ground [“minus”]
  • connect Sensor’s OUT to Beacon’s GPIO0/1 set to “Input” mode

You can’t connect Sensor’s VCC to Beacon’s VCC_IN, because as the name suggests, it’s for input only, if you want to power your beacon with external power and not the batteries. (There’s a chance you can connect Sensor’s VCC to Beacon’s GPIO0/1 that’s set to “Output” and to state “High”—our Beacon doesn’t output much current, but it might be enough for your Sensor.)

You can’t connect GNDs together, because you actually need to supply ground to both these pins (:

Also, keep in mind that Beacon’s GPIO ports work in two states: high and low, so it might be difficult/impossible to read from your sensor without a more complicated circuit that converts the analog data to digital data.

Also, keep in mind Location Beacons have built-in temperature and light sensors (:

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3

Thank you for your answer. I have managed to get the ‘High’ value if sensor has values > 0 and ‘Low’ if data from sensor is 0. It is not what we desired but good enough for our small scale project.

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