Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino from Seeed Studio
The “Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino” from Seeed Studio is an Arduino Uno combined with various sensors and other components on a single printed circuit board. The components are connected to the Arduino with copper tracks, so you don’t have to wire anything. An example sketch has already been put on the Arduino, you only need to connect it with the supplied USB cable and you can get started right away.
The Arduino and components are each individually implemented in the Grove form factor. You can break them out of the circuit board and then use them as separate Grove modules and connect them using the supplied Grove cables. You can read how this works in the previous blog “Grove for Arduino: Temperature & Humidity Display“.
Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino: Contents
The kit comes in a beautifully designed box. When you open the lid, you first see the large PCB. In the two compartments on the sides, you will find six Grove cables and a Micro-USB cable. You don’t have to take the PCB out of the box, there is a cutout for the USB cable at the front. You can connect the USB cable to the PCB and a power supply or a computer and immediately try out the pre-programmed sketch.
You do not need the Grove cables yet. You only use these if you break the components loose or already have loose Grove components that you want to connect to the Seeeduino Lotus.
The Grove PCB components
The Grove beginner kit PCB consists of different 11 different components: the Arduino compatible Seeduino Lotus, 5 sensors, 2 inputs, 2 outputs, and a display.
Microcontroller board:
- Seeeduino Lotus: This component is a combination of the Arduino Uno compatible Seeeduino board and the Grove Base Shield.
Sensors:
- Light sensor: LS06-S photoresistor for measuring environmental light
- Sound sensor: electret microphone with LM386 amplifier for measuring sound levels
- Temperature and humidity sensor: DHT11 for measuring environmental temperature and humidity. The libraries can be found here.
- Barometer sensor: Bosch BMP280 for measuring air pressure and temperature. The libraries can be found here.
- 3-Axis digital accelerometer: LIS3DHTR for measuring movement The libraries are available here.
Inputs:
- Button: momentary push button
- Rotary Angle Sensor: potentiometer
Outputs:
- LED: red, adjustable brightness, can be replaced
- Piezo Buzzer: active, 85dB
Display:
- OLED Display: 0.96″, white, 128 x 64 pixels. It can be used with the U8glib V2 library.
The modules are already connected to the Seeeduino, see this table for the pins and addresses:
| Module | Interface | Pin/address |
| Light | Analog | A6 |
| Sound | Analog | A2 |
| Temperature & humidity | Digital | D3 |
| Barometer | I2C | 0x77 (optionally 0x76) |
| Accelerometer | I2C | 0x19 |
| Button | Digital | D6 |
| Potentiometer | Analog | A0 |
| LED | Digital | D4 |
| Buzzer | Digital | D5 |
| Display | I2C | 0x78 |
Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino Wiki
In addition to the hardware, the wiki page that comes with the Grove Beginner Kit is also aimed at getting you started as quickly as possible.
For example, there are 12 simple but well-documented projects to teach you various basic principles of the Arduino.
- Blinking the LED: What is a digital signal, and how to use the digital outputs
- Pressing Button to Light Up LED: How to use the button as a digital input
- Controlling the Frequency of the Blink: What is an analog signal, and use the potentiometer as an analog input
- Making the Buzzer go BEEP: What is Pulse Width modulation (PWM) and how to use it to control the buzzer
- Making a Light Induct LED: Learn about the serial monitor and how to use it for displaying sensor output
- Sound Sensitive LED Light: Use the serial plotter to graph sensor data in realtime
- Displaying Data on OLED: How to install and use Arduino libraries
- Detecting Surrounding Temperature & Humidity: What is the I2C protocol
- Measuring Surrounding Air Pressure: Display air pressure sensor data using I2C
- Sensing Movement: Display accelerometer data using I2C
- Bonus project 1: Music dynamic rhythm lamp: Use data stored in arrays to control the LED and buzzer
- Bonus project 2: Make an intelligent sound-light induction desk lamp: Use the sound and light sensors to control the LED
You can also find an explanation about installing the USB driver and the Arduino IDE, how the demo sketch works, and how you can break loose the Grove modules.
Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino: to be continued
In subsequent blogs, we will build some fun beginner projects with this kit.
Do you have ideas for projects to make with this kit? Or have you already made something interesting? Let us know in the comment section below this article!
About Seeed Studio
Seeed is the IoT hardware enabler providing services over 10 years that empower makers to realize their projects and products. They offer a wide array of hardware platforms and sensor modules ready to be integrated with existing IoT platforms and one-stop PCB fabrication and PCB assembly service.
Seeed Studio provides a wide selection of electronic parts including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and many different development board platforms. Especially the Grove System helps engineers and makers to avoid jumper wires problems. Seeed Studio has developed more than 280 Grove modules covering a wide range of applications that can fulfill a variety of needs.
