[Answer]- Connecting Photon to the Asset Tracker GPS shield

Hello,

Can I connect the photon to the GPS shield you get when you buy the Asset Tracker for the Electron ?

Yes you can.

Here is the schematic of the shield
https://github.com/spark/shields/blob/master/electron-shields/asset-tracker/pdfs/asset-tracker-sch.pdf

There you’ll see that the used pins are all in the range of the Photon pins too.

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Yes, it works. I just tried it and I was able to get a GPS fix. I didn’t test the accelerometer, but I don’t see a reason why it shouldn’t work, as it’s connected to SPI and A2.

[And ScruffR beat me to the answer again!]

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Thank you guys, it indeed works.

However, since the Electron has the added values of a battery connection and accelerometer (as well as other reasons), I want to connect the photon to the shield using jumpers, while the electron sits in it’s place on top of the gps shield.

From looking at the code, it seems that the only communication between the electron and the gps shield is serial (using Serial1). (I know there’s also D6 that enables/disables the GPS but it’s not that relevant for this matter).

So… can I just connect the Tx on the GPS shield to the Rx on my photon, and the Rx on the shield to the Tx on my photon ?
Also - will it still work with Serial1 ?

Hope I’m making sense here :smile:.
And thanks for all the help!

The accelerometer sits on the Asset Tracker Shield - not on the Electron.
The attached device Electron or Photon also use the SPI pins A2~A5 to talk to the accelerometer and A7/WKP as interrupt pin for waking the µC on movement.

It would be rather tricky to have the RX/TX lines shared between an Electron in the shield and a seperate Photon - both talking to the same GPS module.

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Gotcha, thanks for that.

Regarding my original question - can I connect the Core as well ?

I wouldn't see why not.