I2C and SPI on the micro:bit; additions to the babelboard range

By -
micro:bit Keypad using I2C+ MC23008
For some reason there's not a lot on the web about using I2C and SPI with the BBC micro:bit.

The I2C and SPI protocols allow single board computers like the micro:bit, the Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano to drive hundreds of different types of useful peripheral chips.

There are lots of widely available drivers for the Raspberry Pi, the Arduino and  Adafruit boards. I've seen fewer for the micro:bit, and I have started writing some more as part of my babelboard project. I am also building a babelboard for the micro:bit.

The babelboard project


Babelboards allow you to connect a range of I2C and SPI devices to several popular single board computers.

The image on the right shows an mcp23S08 reading a hex keypad driven by a micro:bit using SPI.

The micro:bit babelboard allows you to connect Grove I2C devices and the Quick2Wire port expander and analog boards. You can get adapters that connect Grove to Qwiik, so you can also connect the range of Qwiik devices to the micro:bit. Planned enhancements will make it easy to connect to the Pimoroni breakout garden range, and the Adafruit STEMMA/STEMMA QT ranges.
A babelboard for the Jetson Nane

Existing babelboards allow you to connect I2C and SPI peripherals  to the Raspberry Pi, the Jetson Nano and Adafruit feather range. Since the Adafruit Clue has a micro:bit compatible pinout you'll be able to connect to that as well.

Most of these exist as prototpyes at present, but the designs are Open Source and I'll be publishing them as part of the babelboard hardware project. Some use stripboards, some use Adafruit permaProto boards, and a growing number use custom PCB designs created in Fritzing or KiCAD.

Connecting the hardware is not much use without software to drive it. If the the computer you're using supports CircuitPython or Adafruit Blinka you've got all you need to start using any device included in the CircuitPython library.

I'll be adding code to drive things from the micro:bit as time permits, and I'll also be adding code for more of the Grove peripherals.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Controlling a Raspberry Pi Pico remotely using PySerial

By -
Image
Update : I'm using thie code below in another project, and found that I had not correctly fixed the reported bug. The new version passes automated tests, and I am pretty sure it works OK. I have changed the name of the class to Talker  since it can both send and receive information. Apologies to all concerned for the bug! Introduction You can use a Raspberry Pi Pico as a powerful peripheral to a host - a Raspberry Pi, a Jetson Nano, a laptop or workstation. In this article you'll see how to interact with a Pico running MicroPython or CircuitPython by writing some Python code that runs on the host. The software is easy to use. It enables you to send a Python statement to the Pico and read the results. The statement can be any valid MicroPython code. Setting up the host and the Pico For this article I've used a Raspberry Pi as the host, but any computer running Windows, Linux or Mac OS will do so long as it has Python 3.5 or later installed. In particular, you can use this t...
Read more

Five steps to connect Jetson Nano and Arduino

By -
Image
Yesterday's post showed how to link a micro:bit to the Jetson Nano. One of the members of the (unofficial) NVIDIA Jetson Nano group on Facebook asked about connecting an Arduino to the Jetson. Here's a simple recipe for getting data from the Arduino to the Jetson Nano. It should work on all the Jetson models, not just the Nano, but I only have Nanos to hand. On request, I've added a recipe at the end of this post which sends data from the Jetson Nano to the Arduino; it turns the default LED on the Arduino on or off. The recipe for sending data from the Arduino to the Jetson has just 5 stages: Program the Arduino. (I used the ASCIITable example). Connect the Arduino to the Jetson using a USB connector Install pyserial on the Jetson Download a three-line Python script Run the script.   Programming the Arduino I used an Arduino Uno, and checked it on a verteran Duemilanove (above), but any Arduino should work. You'll need to do this step usi...
Read more

Raspberry Pi Pico project 2 - MCP3008

By -
Image
This post show you how to drive the MCP3008 8-channel ADC using a Raspberry Pi Pico. I'll start with a personally embarrassing and annoyingly relevant story. I'll also tell you about a minor 'gotcha' when using SPI on the Pico, and how you can avoid it. Finally, I've include the code and fritzing diagram I used to test the interface. First, the story. Back in 2012, when the Raspberry Pi was fresh and new, I was running a startup called Quick2Wire.  We made add-on boards for the Pi. Just before Christmas we sent out our first batch of boards to a small army of beta-testers. The beta boards didn't work. Somehow a single trace on the pcb had got deleted and one of the GPIO pins was isolated. The boards were still usable and it wasn't too hard to solder in a jumper wire to replace the missing trace, but it was very embarrassing. It wasn't just that we'd shipped boards with a defect. The really annoying thing was that I'd set up an  automated loop-bac...
Read more