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I'm new to arduino's and am currently working on a project which requires a lot of different sensors. I was just wondering if its possible to use all the following sensors on a single Arduino Uno:

  • 2 Separate Load sensors (i.e giving different readings) controlled with an load cell amplifier
  • a Gyro Sensor
  • an Accelerometer
  • and an ESC

If its not possible, could someone please tell me what hardware I would need to run all these sensors together. Thanks :).

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    Did you check what kind of interface they have? And an ESC is not a sensor.
    – gre_gor
    Feb 20, 2018 at 18:19
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    @gre_gor It is... it "senses" a PWM signal from some external source and sets the speed of the motor proportionally ;)
    – Majenko ♦
    Feb 20, 2018 at 18:35
  • Thanks for the responses! I just included the ESC case it takes up some ports on the Arduino as well. Here is some information on each sensor: The load amp i'm using is a HX711 which outputs VDD to 5v, DAT to port 3, CLK to port 3 and GND to GND respectively, but I have two separate amplifiers. I'm using a Gyro and Accelerometer in one (MPU6050) which outputs VCC to 5v, GND to GND, SCL to A5, SDA to A4 and INT to port 2 respectivly. The ESC connects to the 5v, GND and port 9.
    – Gian.Pit
    Feb 20, 2018 at 19:47
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    @Gian.Pit it would be best to edit that info into your question. Comments are ephemeral.
    – RubberDuck
    Feb 21, 2018 at 0:04

2 Answers 2

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Yes, it should work. The HX711 need two pins each (one for clock and one for shifting out the data). The MPU6050 seems to have an I2C interface, which needs two lines (SCL and SDA). And lastly an ESC uses a PWM pin.

All in all this needs 7 pins, way less than an Arduino UNO has.

Note that having enough pins doesn't mean, that you can usw all the sensors at the same time. You might habe to disable one for a short time to do something else.

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  • you are always only "reading" one at a time in linear programing. But given the list that was provided I do not see any reason that anything would need to be "disabled" Like, the ESC may only be updated so often, or the gyro/accelerometer might only be read from every so often, but they are still enabled and functioning.
    – Chad G
    Feb 22, 2018 at 1:03
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It really depends on how many pins each sensor uses. The signal pins of all the sensors used would have to be equal to or less than the total number of I/O pins on the arduino, which would be 20. So you can control 20 sensors if they each have one signal pin.

However, to control more sensors (or use a lower pin count on arduino) you can use multiplexing. See Two sensors on one input or MULTIPLEXING WITH ARDUINO AND THE 74HC595.

Theoretically, you can control an infinite number of sensors with the use of multiplexing.

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  • You are not taking into account the type of signals produced by your "Sensors" If you were talking single pin digital sensor("Switch") then you are kinda correct, there still is no way (even theoretically) you can say you can support infinite number of sensors since you have to be able to address them some how. But most sensors (like the ones listed in the question) use some sort of protocol, (I2C, SPI, UART) and that greatly effects the number(and method) that can be used by a single uno.
    – Chad G
    Feb 22, 2018 at 1:00

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