As part of my SmartHomeDIY project (open source), I need as small and efficient server which could also talk to my Arduino stations that are using RF24 module, so for the rescue came my Raspberry PI and it's serial GPIO pins.
All of my Arduino stations are talking to each other with the RF24 module (connected via SPI) and I needed a fast lightweight server (and small in size) to talk to that network.
I wanted to use the PI to do that job and I knew I could use it's GPIOs as serial (usually used for console logging in Hardware development stages) So I figured why not connect a serial device to the PI GPIOs and through this device I will talk to my network. So I figured up the following setup
I connected the PI to a serial BT device called Bluetooth HC-05
This device can talk via serial and forward everything to the other side BT device which is connected to an Arduino which in turn checks the commands and forward these commands to the specified Arduino station via the RF24 module, we will talk about the protocol and the BT device configuration in a moment. nodejs, pi and serial
To use the PI serial you will first need to disable PI console prints to serial, to do that go here
To know more about pi serial read here If cannot disable serial for pi read more here As a summary here is what you will have to do:
1. download a utility
2. disable serial
3. check status
You will need to connect the bluetooth module to the PI GPIOs as shown above - here is a closeup
BE SURE TO DOUBLE CHECK BECAUSE THE PI DOES NOT HAVE PROTECTION CIRCUITRY - YOU CAN BURN YOUR PI FOREVER!
Note that there are at least 2 types of revision for the PI board - so make sure which one you have - each one has a different GPIO layout
Configuring the BT modules to talk to each other
To config the 2 BT modules to talk to each other and act as an over the air UART we will need to enter the AT command configuration mode, to do that we will give power to HC-05 while key pin is connected to Arduino pin (9) and pin (9) is already HIGH (or other pin you wish to use or any HIGH level source).
After all these commands the BT modules should be binded and auto connect always. For more AT Commands info look: After all the configurations, if everything is fine, the BT modules will blink at a slower rate, which indicates that the modules are in sync and connected to each other. note that every time you will reset the modules they will blink fast until connected to each other and in sync, I am using that indication a lot, for example to see if the modules are in range when installed in my house walls. talking to the serial from node
After everything is connected and configured all we have to do is to send the data (commands) in my case through the serial (UART) port to the dispatch station
To do that will we have to use node serial module https://www.npmjs.com/package/serialport Install it as any node module. And here is an code example how to use it
Every command that we will send from this serial site will go through BT module and received on the other BT module and the Arduino on the dispatch station side will received that data as any other serial data, from there that station can parse that and forward it via SPI to the other stations
Here is the code for the dispatch station. Important parts of the code are highlighted here.
To trail and error with Arduino sketchs you will need some tools, one of them is an oscilloscope, lets learn the basics of this important tool.
An oscilloscope is a debugging tool for electronics circuits where you can prob any point and check out the signal in watch it in real time (voltage over time)
for example you could check an Arduino PWM signal with this tool and measure the duty cycle, voltage or if it is even working at all. I bought mine here This is a starting level device and it has it's limitation but it is cheap and will do the job. It does not have it's own display like and expensive, portable and professional ones, but it will rather connect to your computer via USB and you will see the signal over the computers screen when lunching the application that comes with it. Please check out this video to see it in action Also note that you can use the scope with the software provided or use the open source PulseView or the another great alternative is basicscope If your are learning to code to Arduino and you write your own sketchs sooner to later you will need to learn about avrdude, so let's do that. avrdude is a command line utility developed by Atmel. It is used to burn sketches to your Arduino, configure your Arduino register and fuses and also flash a different bootloader then the stock one for example the optiboot a smaller bootloader which will free up some memory space for your sketch. ExampleThis command will burn your Arduino with custom bootloader hex file.
Check out this article about this custom bootloader to learn more. You can learn how to install it here. if you are not familiar with adafruit you should definitely do so. This site by ladyada explains everything you should know about avrdude commands.
While building my SmartHomeDIY project I encountered a problem trying to use multiple SPI devices connected to the same Arduino.
Although the SPI bus should support multiple devices at the same time (toggling the Chip-Select line), this does not always work (mostly due to part using the bus not respecting the chip select or other configuration issues). So after reading for some time and experimenting I came up with the following solution. learn more about transistors here
The above station is an IR recorder and transmitter station.
It can be set into recording state which then saved the recorded IR-in data into and SDCard connected over SPI. But when not in recording mode it will listen over the RF24 (also connected via SPI) for commands. Once a command is given it will try to send the IR code request (for example turn TV on) To do that it will again have to move to SDCard mode and read the previously recorded data and retransmit it over the IR out LED. So to solve this I have connected the SPI lines to couple of transistors/switches, They just CUT the lines of the component which is not being used at the moment and there for prevent the SPI lines collision. Attached is the code and hardware layout to do just that Note that it does not matter which type of project you have. You can always do the same transistor-switch trick to cut of the problematic SPI lines while using the others. A special note for the transistor configurations, It will not work if you design you transistor configuration as usually suggested, which means to set a logic level by design at the output of the transistor so that the base will toggle the out voltage (same as an amplifier). Instead I set the signal to go trough the transistor, which needed so testing to select the transistor which does not affect the actual signal (it will depend on the transistor type, spec and configuration...) So it took me some time to figure out the right transistor values and configuration. For trail and error I used this logic analyzer 8 logic lines or better yet one of these pro logic analyzers or one from ebay and there is also a very cool one which has 8 digital channels and one analog - perfect for beginners. I inspected the incoming signal and the outgoing signal to make sure the transistor does not temper with the incoming signal so everything will continue to work as expected (the transistor are transparent to the actual data) You could also try this Hantek 6022BE PC USB Digital Oscilloscope which is working perfectly on Window 10 environment. You could also get one on ebay You could also use this logic multiplexer [8 Channel Logic Level Converter Convert TTL Bi-directional] to do the same job which I have not tested yet. But I think my way is more fun! :) |