Daniel Blendea

Important changes to forums and questions

All forums and questions are now archived. To start a new conversation or read the latest updates go to forums.mbed.com.

9 years, 11 months ago.

Shields compatibility

Hi,

If I connect a shield not found on this page to the Arduino pins, will it work? Or the shield/L152RE need some custom firmware to be able to communicate with each other?

I'm quite a beginner in this area so I'm confused about this compatibility thing.

Thanks, Daniel

Question relating to:

Last updated: 20 Apr 2021
Affordable and flexible platform to ease prototyping using a STM32L152RET6 microcontroller.

1 Answer

Andy A
9 years, 11 months ago.

In terms of hardware compatibility it depends.

Arduinos use 5V IO, mbeds are 3.3V but can withstand 5V inputs.

Which means that communication from the shield to the mbed should work fine but communication from the mbed to the shield will depend on the parts used on the shield. Most will work with 3.3V inputs but it does depend on the parts used.

For the software side you'll need mbed firmware to drive the sheild just as you need code to drive it on an arduino, that is the same whether the shield is listed here or not. Assuming someone hasn't already written it you'll either need to do that from scratch, by modifying similar mbed drivers or by converting the arduino drivers. How hard that is depends a lot on the complexity of the shield in question.

Accepted Answer

In addition to this, there can sometimes be issues with pinouts. And there is a IO voltage level pin connection to shields: Ideally shields have level shifters which use this voltage level and so they work perfectly with 3.3V. In real life often this pin is ignored.

posted by Erik - 21 Jan 2015