process continued . . .

so decided to use the rangefinders after all - however, even though they are stated 5v - they are actually accurate at 3v

the poorly soldered sd card readers that were put on are not salvageable . . . so the number of sensors that I can install has been limited

and one of the rangefinders doesn't read at all and it gets hot, not sure what the problem is there, just not going to use that guy

 . . . . .

after further research - the new (blue base) waveshields have 15 pins, the blue bases do not have matching solder points - the instructions nor the schematics match  - have no idea what is happening but their own parts don't work nor match