Hey folks! I’ve been putzing about with littleBits for several years but haven’t gotten involved in the online forum until now. Seems to be a great community and resource for aspiring makers and experienced hackers alike.
I’m designing an adapter that will allow me to use littleBits sensors with an external neuroscience education platform. Ideally, I’d like to power these sensors through their outputs (i.e. their female bitSnaps), as this method dramatically simplifies wiring for some models (for example, the eye model uses five or more light sensors in ‘dark’ mode to emulate photoreceptors). However, I also want to avoid damaging the the littleBits if the user mistakenly tries to power the boards from both ends.
Any thoughts? Think I need some sort of sensing/cutoff circuit, or just a really good set of instructions? Or should I isolate the VCC rails from the two platforms and just require the user to have two supplies? This method worked well in testing but it’s a bit clunky, and doesn’t solve the extra wiring issue.