What is inside the Spike Ultrasonic Sensor 45604?
Pictures of Top&Bottom PCB-Assembly would be helpful.
PoweredUp Cable and Connector use 6-Pin, but why is there used 8-Pin connector inside "black-and-white" Module connection? Are these 2 additional pins in use? What is their function?
The back of this sensor unscrews. The back breaks out the 6-pin cable into an 8-pin connector:
The order of the connections for the pins in that picture from left to right are:
6 5 4 3 x x 2 1
ID2 ID1 VCC GND x x M2 M1
The primary sensor can be pulled out of the front of the part:
We can then remove the shroud around the sensor to reveal the front side of the PCB:
The largest chip on the front side is an STM8S105K6.
Here's the PCB from the back:
The largest chip on the back is a HEF4049BT hex inverting buffer.
I don't have any insight into why an 8-pin connector is used internally when there are only 6 conductors in the wire, but I did confirm electrically that 6 of the 8 pins are connected to the 6 conductors in the wire.
There are 3rd-party breakout boards that can make the connections from the back of the ultrasonic sensor available for advanced usage:
A header (or individual wires) of appropriate size can also be inserted directly into the back of the sensor without a specialized board, but the pitch is smaller (0.050" or 1.27mm) than what is typically used by hobbyists.
