I will have several devices with atmel microcontrollers which Im going to connect to PC using COM. Is there any way to connect several devices into one COM? (Let's assume COM can handle amounts of data I need to transmit and I can choose the way of sending data using COM)
Sure, chain the ATmegas together via serial, and use a single USB-serial device. Combine all the data you need to send, and send it out of the single serial port. In each ATmega, you can either relay all the data to the next one, or use a little more intelligent scheme and only forward data meant for other ATmegas.
The standard RS232 COM port does not allow to connect several devices to one port. Because parallel connection of several devices may change electrical signal characteristics such as voltage levels. You may build a chain of ATmegas as uint128_t suggested or change the physical interface type to RS485.
RX pins: you can connect more RX pins together.
TX pins: you can connect more TX pins together if you ensure that only one is active at any time. Others pins must be configured as input or high impedance. This can be done with a suitable protocol.
The parasitic capacitances of pins connected together sum up - this can eventually limit the transfer speed.
Related
I've been working with a Siemens PLC to send data using RS232. The communication itself is working perfectly, I can monitor it if I connect the PLC to my PC (via a serial comm port).
Now, I wanted to make this communication wireless. I found out about the HC-05 modules and decided to get a few. I set 2 of them up with my arduino (one as master, one as slave, both paired and using the UART 9600,1,0 which is the same that my PLC uses).
I made the following connections:
PC Connection (with a serial comm adapter)
PLC Connection
Let's say I want to send this string:
<SoH>1RZ<CR>
If I check my serial monitor, I get weird stuff. Like:
##NULL©#NUL
The weird thing is that if I just remove the bluetooth modules and connect the PLC's Rx and Tx to the PC's Tx and Rx, respectively, the data is sent flawlessly. So I know that I have everything sorted out on the PLC/PC side.
Has anyone been through this, or does anyone have a suggestion that I can try?
RS232 typically uses ±12V. Negative voltages between -3V and -15V is logic high and positive voltages +3V till +15V is logic low.
Your bluetooth module on the other hand uses TTL logic. With a voltage range of 0-5V.
0-0.8V is low, 2-5V is high.
So
a) you cannot create the necessary voltage levels
b) you risk to destroy your 5V hardware by connecting it to ±12V.
c) you might run into problems as RS232 also has optional mechanisms for flow control. So Rx and Tx might not be enough.
You'll at least need a TTL-> RS232 level shifter for the PLC side and a USB to TTL serial adapter for the PC
I have a project in hand where I need to connect 5 or more arduinos as slaves to Raspberry Pi. Load Cells, Reed Switch, Solenoid lock will be connected to each of the arduino. The arduinos need to send the weight readings when a communication is started by the raspberry pi(master). Only a single arduino will be activated at a time. The arduinos will be placed at a maximum of 6ft distance from the raspberry pi. I need advice regarding how to make this connection. I read that I2C cannot be used for long distances so I am unsure if 6 ft is a long distance for I2C. Next, I am trying to see if a USB would work for my case but the issue is the Pi has only 4 USB slots. So can I use a external USB hub with an external power supply and connected each of the arduinos to the USB hub and provide individual power supply to the arduinos? Will this arrangement work or should I be looking at any other protocol apart from I2C and USB?? Any advice on this will be much appreciated. Thanks a lot for your time.
Arduino (Nano, Uno, Mega etc.) can communicate via SPI, I2C or UART.
Long story short, SPI is not suitable for your application. It is used for fast data transfer over short distances (usually milimeters or centimeters), so mainly for communication between chips mounted on the same PCB or PCBs close together (e.g. display shields).
Using I2C is perfectly fine (let's say up to 10 meters) and in your case it is a way to go. The maximum possible length depends on baud rate, for 10 meters a 9600 baud rate would be OK. The big advantage is that you need only 2 wires to connect all Arduinos, the disadvantage is that only one device can transfer data at the time – in your case, that does not matter.
UART is used for communication with many external modules (GSM, GPS, HMI, ...) and also in combination with USB-TTL chip for communication via USB (virtual COM port). In your case, you can use UART e.g. in combination with external UART-RS485 converter module, but there is no need since you can use I2C.
I have four Atmega328p in a single board and I want one of them send the same data (i.e. sensor readings) to the other three simultaneously. I'm not interested in a bidirectional communication. I read this thread (How can I broadcast data to multiple SPI slaves and how it works?) about SPI broadcasting, and someone mentioned not being possible because in SPI communication is full duplex and MISO and MOSI lines are active at the same time. However, I was wondering if I could just let the MISO lines unconnected and all SS pins pulled low, so I could broadcast a message to all slaves simultaneosly, taking into account that I do not need any type of response from the slaves to the master.
So, is this possible? Or how else could I work around this problem? I was also considering on using UART's Tx line and connect all the receivers in parallel to it, but I'm not sure that would work too.
Thanks for your attention.
I'm trying to make a cluster with Zynq-7010 boards for a real-time application. One of them will be the master, and it will control eight client boards. The master board will also collect the data from clients. I tried to use 100Mbit ethernet connection to connect the nodes but it was not as fast as I need. In addition, it was not deterministic because of switch's indeterministic behavior. Could you give me some idea about how to connect them fast and deterministic way?
One way to speed it up is to use 1Gbit ethernet, which is supported by Zynq-7010, if you have an appropriate ethernet transceiver on the board.
If you have FMC connectors, you could use an FMC Ethernet board to enable the master to connect directly to 4 other boards to avoid the non-determinism of an ethernet switch.
I am trying connect multiple Arduino Mega Boards via their Serial pins to allow communication between the boards. I want to be able to connect an arbitrary amount of arduinos by daisy-chaning them and I want one board to be the master, taking control over the actions of the other boards. The master should be determined dynamically by the boards. I am aware that the daisy chaining method introduces delays to the communication due to the forwarding of packets, but so far I am planning on connection 4 boards at most. In the future this might increase to maybe 10 boards. My boards all have a separate power source, since they are connected to some other hardware which has its own power source.
My idea was to connect the boards in such a way, that the master would be determined by the wireing of the boards. I thought about having the "Serial" port as 'To-Master' serial port and the "Serial1" port as "To-Child" serial port. The boards send hello messages on the "To-Master" serial port and the master replies if it received such a message on the "To-Child" serial port. If no answer is received after some seconds, the board determines itself to be the master.
I wired the boards up by connecting the ground pins, and wiring RX1 of the master to TX0 of the child and TX1 of the master to RX0 of the child:
Basically my setup is working, since the boards do detect each other and exchange hello messages and replies. There is however a significant amount of packet loss or corruption which I would like to eliminate.
As a simple measure of packet verification, I begin each packet with a "magic number". The receiving board looks for this byte and only tries to read a packet after receiving this byte. Any other bytes received are simply discarded.
As it seems, it happens quite often that something is received on either serial port that does not start with the magic number and is therefore discarded. The timestamps of these events are however consistent with the timestamps of sending of the other board meaning that the packet was at least partially transmitted but somehow the magic byte got corrupted or discarded.
Is this a known problem with the arduinos serial ports?
Can it be related to my wiring?
Are there any measures I can take to ensure a save delivery of the packets?
Can it be a problem of the boards not reading the signal at the correct time (I used a baud rate of 9600)?
I also looked into I2C communication, but I did not find any resource or information if it is possible to dynamically choose the master for this type of communication. Also in the documentation it stated, that it is important that all devices share a common power source which is not possible in my scenario. However, the basic master-slave principle of this I2C conforms with my requirements, as I have a master that sends commands to all other boards. Could I2C be utilized in my case?
Thank you for your thoughts!
Here is a discussion about multi-master I2C topology of Arduinos, seems that it is supported (haven't tested it myself). - http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php/topic,13579.0.html
You can test SPI as well, here is a comparison between the two - http://components.about.com/od/Theory/a/Selecting-Between-I2c-And-Spi.htm.
Slave might be selected with generic GPIOs
I don't know any known implementation of multi-clients on top of Serial bus (usually it is intended for peer2peer communication only) - even though, your configuration seems reasonable, I would be considering other options.
BTW, from your comment about different power sources, I assume your boards are away from each-other. Have you considered very cheap ($2) RF modules, such as nRF24L01+ (http://maniacbug.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/getting-started-rf24/). THere is a library for networking those in multi-node network
Might be better off with I2C or SPI like people have suggested here.
However, to address your question directly, it is most likely wiring. I am assuming you are using cheap jumper wires to plug directly into the Arduino Headers. Noise on this connection is the most likely problem or garbled serial messages. Try implementing with twisted pair cables and connecting directly to the board.
SPI or I2C might have better error correction than your customer serial protocol. I would see the other answers for that.