
Additionally, the clock can be considered "idle" when it is high or low. The peripheral will read the data on either the rising edge or the falling edge of the clock pulse. In the Arduino SPI library, this is controlled by the setBitOrder() function. The interface can send data with the most-significant bit (MSB) first, or least-significant bit (LSB) first. These options must match those of the device you're talking to check the device's datasheet to see what it requires. You will need to select some options when setting up your interface. This is vastly faster than the above commands, but it will only work on certain pins. Or you can use the SPI Library, which takes advantage of the SPI hardware built into the microcontroller. These are software-based commands that will work on any group of pins, but will be somewhat slow. You can use the shiftIn() and shiftOut() commands. If you're using an Arduino, there are two ways you can communicate with SPI devices: (A good example is on the Wikipedia SPI page.) The SPI protocol is also simple enough that you (yes, you!) can write your own routines to manipulate the I/O lines in the proper sequence to transfer data. Many microcontrollers have built-in SPI peripherals that handle all the details of sending and receiving data, and can do so at very high speeds. Lots of peripherals will require lots of CS lines if you're running low on outputs, there are binary decoder chips that can multiply your CS outputs. To talk to a particular peripheral, you'll make that peripheral's CS line low and keep the rest of them high (you don't want two peripherals activated at the same time, or they may both try to talk on the same CIPO line resulting in garbled data).
Coolterm tutorial full#
(In cases where you might want to return a variable amount of data, you could always return one or two bytes specifying the length of the data and then have the controller retrieve the full amount.)

For example, if you send the command for "read data" to a device, you know that the device will always send you, for example, two bytes in return. In practice this isn't a problem, as SPI is generally used to talk to sensors that have a very specific command structure.

This is very different than asynchronous serial, where random amounts of data can be sent in either direction at any time. Because the controller always generates the clock signal, it must know in advance when a peripheral needs to return data and how much data will be returned. Notice we said "prearranged" in the above description. If the peripheral needs to send a response back to the controller, the controller will continue to generate a prearranged number of clock cycles, and the peripheral will put the data onto a third data line called CIPO, for "Controller In / Peripheral Out". When data is sent from the controller to a peripheral, it's sent on a data line called COPI, for "Controller Out / Peripheral In". There is always only one controller (which is almost always your microcontroller), but there can be multiple peripherals (more on this in a bit). The side that generates the clock is called the "controller", and the other side is called the "peripheral".
Coolterm tutorial serial#
In SPI, only one side generates the clock signal (usually called CLK or SCK for Serial ClocK). You might be thinking to yourself, self, that sounds great for one-way communications, but how do you send data back in the opposite direction? Here's where things get slightly more complicated. You can also see OSHWA's resolution here.

Check out this page for more on our reasoning behind this change. SparkFun has joined with other members of OSHWA in a resolution to move away from using "Master" and "Slave" to describe signals between the controller and the peripheral.

Note: You may not recognize the COPI/CIPO labels for SPI pins.
