Powering the HC-SR04 when both 5V pins are being used

Hello all,

I'm trying to follow a couple different tutorials to add the HC-SR04 to my DiddyBorg.

Unfortunately both want me to connect the HC-SR04 to the 5V pin 2, and both 5V pins are taken by the battery connector.

I've seen people saying to split the wires, but since the wires going to these pins are all combined to take up the first 3 pins, I'm not sure how to approach it.

I'm obviously a huge newb in terms of electrical wiring side of things, but would love a simple/easy way to do this.

piborg's picture

There is a simple way of doing this if you do not mind doing some soldering.
Simply solder a wire to the underside of the BattBorg 6-pin connector.
See the image attached below for which pins are 5V and which is GND.

If you do not wish to solder splitting the wires would be the best option.
Since the PicoBorg Reverse and Raspberry Pi only need a single 5V connection you can connect one of the two 5V pins to the breadboard instead.
This would require some single pin wires if you have any.

Images: 

Is there a reason they can't use the pins above the ones shown in your image if not 'daisy chaining' to another board?

piborg's picture

None at all, you can use all six of the pins the same as the standard six GPIO pins if you like ^_^

In the case of a DiddyBorg the daisy-chain connector is used by the BattBorg, hence the soldering suggestion.

Awesome advice, thanks so much!

As a newb, can you lead me in the right direction to find more help/instructions about:

Since the PicoBorg Reverse and Raspberry Pi only need a single 5V connection you can connect one of the two 5V pins to the breadboard instead.
This would require some single pin wires if you have any.

Again, very new to the hardware side coming from the software side of things!

piborg's picture

No problem, I have attached a wiring image for you.

The blue and grey wires connect 5V and GND to the breadboard.
The red and black wires connect 5V and GND from the PicoBorg Reverse (and BattBorg) to the Raspberry Pi.

The yellow wire connects 3.3V from the Raspberry Pi to the PicoBorg Reverse.
The orange and purple wires connect the two I2C lines between the Raspberry Pi and the PicoBorg Reverse.

Images: 

Wow thank you so much! I'll try this tonight!

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