First off, some context. We mounted our rio vertically rather than horizontally along with our entire electrical board which has had some unforeseen consequences when it comes to the ADXRS450 gyro. It only has two axes so we can’t really see angles when turning. Now if the bot does a somersault we know the exact angle it has somersaulted.
On a more serious note, we decided to mount the gyro horizontally with a mount and connect the gyro to the rio with jumpers. Right now we’re using some janky PWM cables that have been “repurposed” to connect the socket on the bottom of the gyro to the SPI port. It’s technically working but I’d like something more secure. Any ideas?
We used a pair of 5-pin cables (similar to PWM, the kind that plug into Grayhill encoders) and some hot glue to make sure the two cables stay in the right orientation if they come unplugged.
It would be pretty straight forward to design a PCB that mated to the spi header on the RIO with right angle 2x5 headers to allow you to plug in your sensor in the desired orientation.
This would be a hood into level PCB design project. All through hole components, so should be easy to solder by hand.
Id suggest using OSHPark.com for low quantity PCB runs.
If this is the route you want to go, but don’t want to do the PCB layout, I could throw something together for you. I’d just need to know which orientation you wanted the gyro in - since I can’t don’t know how the RIO is oriented when mounted vertically. A picture of your current setup would help clarify.
You’d need to buy a few headers from digikey and the PCBs, rough estimate of costs would be around $15 for 3 PCBs and the required headers to populate them.