OutOfTheBox
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2006
- Messages
- 118
- Reaction score
- 0
I have been buying stuff from the Pi Shophttps://www.pishop.co.za/store/ in Johannesburg South Africa for over a year, I order online, I get the next day, I hardly communicated with anyone there, I never needed to...until yesterday. I am shocked at how uncaring and unprofessional the experience was.
I had a 9DOF BN0055 motion sensor but it was for the Arduino and to use it with the Pi with the Adafruit software you need to set it into UART mode and not I2C mode but the board I have the pin is hard-wired to earth so it is physically impossible to do so. So I ordered one from the Pi Shop but when it arrived I saw that if was a different version from the standard Adafruit version and had no pins to connect to set it in UART mode so I presumed it must be hard-wired for the Pi as it is the Pi Shop. I connected it up as per Adafruit's instructions but without the 3.3V connected to the UART pin and............diddly squat, dead on arrival, nothing. So I phoned the Pi Shop and the lady I spoke to sent me a plain text email as follows;
Good day
Sensor Pi
Vin 3.3V
GND GND
SCL SCL (GPIO 3)
SDA SDA (GPIO 2)
RESET Your choice usually GPIO 18 or 16
And then you can use the Adafruit library as usual.
https://learn.adafruit.com/bno055-absol ... k/software
Please don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.
Thank you
Now if you skip to the hardware part of the page you should be able to see that this is not the way to wire the Pi up to the board. As can be seen by the bloody great picture in the middle. The Pi is connected to the UART Tx/Rx pins and 3.3V is connected to the PS1 pin.
So anyway I get my logic analyser and connect it up to the Pi to confirm which pins the Pi is using for serial coms and it is as the Adafruit site shows using the Tx/Rx pins of the Pi. I also confirm beyond all doubt that the sensor board is dead, I checked the voltage on the pin of the chip itself and it was connected via a resistor to 3.3V and was being pulled down by the chip. Confirmed beyond all doubt after hours and 2am. So I sent an email telling them that it was dead, I needed a new one before Monday but he needed to check that the boards were in fact for the Pi and he must check one before sending.
I then get an email back claiming that no, the way he emailed me is the correct way and his sensors work with the default install of Adafruit software and then I get the I am liable for the postage blah blah blah.
You know the worst thing about this whole affair, is it is obvious this company has ZERO passion for the product. No real apology, in your face telling me that I am a liar and his product worked with the default install. The postage here is crazy, it cost half the price of the product, so I told him in my original email that I just needed a new one and was not going to bugger around doing the return thing if it was going to cost me the cost of the product and then you tell me that you don't like my soldering of the headers or some other BS. I made it very clear, find out about the boards, get one out of stock, check it is working with a Pi, tell me how much to transfer into your account and send me a guaranteed working board.......No not interested, wont even discuss the difference between his instructions and the web site's instructions, just keeps saying his boards work with the default install and his wiring instructions.
If you just head over to the Adafruit site and look at the HUGE picture of how to wire it and if you check the config files, you will see it is using UART and the Tx and Rx pins and nothing like his instructions. He wasn't even prepared to spend 1 minute checking up, or 15 minutes going and grabbing one of the ones he had in stock and checking. I was expecting an email back saying, we are sorry, I checked one of the boards here, it is working, the software and hardware config is ......if you transfer x amount into our account it will be there on Monday.
Anyway I wasn't going to throw good money after bad, he refused to test a board he had, so I went and got the Arduino board and decided to go the software route and hack the Adafruit code to work in I2C mode and with the help from those who have gone before I am nearly there.
Worst service EVER, the in your face refusal to spend not even 5 minutes checking, the fact that he is an official Raspberry Pi dealer. Anyway I am $50 out of pocket and weekend on this unpleasant experience.
I had a 9DOF BN0055 motion sensor but it was for the Arduino and to use it with the Pi with the Adafruit software you need to set it into UART mode and not I2C mode but the board I have the pin is hard-wired to earth so it is physically impossible to do so. So I ordered one from the Pi Shop but when it arrived I saw that if was a different version from the standard Adafruit version and had no pins to connect to set it in UART mode so I presumed it must be hard-wired for the Pi as it is the Pi Shop. I connected it up as per Adafruit's instructions but without the 3.3V connected to the UART pin and............diddly squat, dead on arrival, nothing. So I phoned the Pi Shop and the lady I spoke to sent me a plain text email as follows;
Good day
Sensor Pi
Vin 3.3V
GND GND
SCL SCL (GPIO 3)
SDA SDA (GPIO 2)
RESET Your choice usually GPIO 18 or 16
And then you can use the Adafruit library as usual.
https://learn.adafruit.com/bno055-absol ... k/software
Please don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.
Thank you
Now if you skip to the hardware part of the page you should be able to see that this is not the way to wire the Pi up to the board. As can be seen by the bloody great picture in the middle. The Pi is connected to the UART Tx/Rx pins and 3.3V is connected to the PS1 pin.
So anyway I get my logic analyser and connect it up to the Pi to confirm which pins the Pi is using for serial coms and it is as the Adafruit site shows using the Tx/Rx pins of the Pi. I also confirm beyond all doubt that the sensor board is dead, I checked the voltage on the pin of the chip itself and it was connected via a resistor to 3.3V and was being pulled down by the chip. Confirmed beyond all doubt after hours and 2am. So I sent an email telling them that it was dead, I needed a new one before Monday but he needed to check that the boards were in fact for the Pi and he must check one before sending.
I then get an email back claiming that no, the way he emailed me is the correct way and his sensors work with the default install of Adafruit software and then I get the I am liable for the postage blah blah blah.
You know the worst thing about this whole affair, is it is obvious this company has ZERO passion for the product. No real apology, in your face telling me that I am a liar and his product worked with the default install. The postage here is crazy, it cost half the price of the product, so I told him in my original email that I just needed a new one and was not going to bugger around doing the return thing if it was going to cost me the cost of the product and then you tell me that you don't like my soldering of the headers or some other BS. I made it very clear, find out about the boards, get one out of stock, check it is working with a Pi, tell me how much to transfer into your account and send me a guaranteed working board.......No not interested, wont even discuss the difference between his instructions and the web site's instructions, just keeps saying his boards work with the default install and his wiring instructions.
If you just head over to the Adafruit site and look at the HUGE picture of how to wire it and if you check the config files, you will see it is using UART and the Tx and Rx pins and nothing like his instructions. He wasn't even prepared to spend 1 minute checking up, or 15 minutes going and grabbing one of the ones he had in stock and checking. I was expecting an email back saying, we are sorry, I checked one of the boards here, it is working, the software and hardware config is ......if you transfer x amount into our account it will be there on Monday.
Anyway I wasn't going to throw good money after bad, he refused to test a board he had, so I went and got the Arduino board and decided to go the software route and hack the Adafruit code to work in I2C mode and with the help from those who have gone before I am nearly there.
Worst service EVER, the in your face refusal to spend not even 5 minutes checking, the fact that he is an official Raspberry Pi dealer. Anyway I am $50 out of pocket and weekend on this unpleasant experience.
