lopy to raspberry pi 3 serial connection

[robert-hh]

@thomand1000 It seems that in both code samples you first send something, and then wait for a response. I would have expected that you interlock that, so whwn you send something form one side, you would wait for data on the other side.
The fact that you see somthing on the rpi side might be caused by buffering in the serial driver for any data that might arrive, even when no instance is waiting for it.

[zappfinger]

@thomand1000 Yes, like Robert said, you should be reading on one machine and writing on the other initially. Also, for clarity, specify bits, parity and stop also on the RPi side..

[thomand1000]

@robert-hh Thank you very much! It didn't work right away, but I decided to try to eliminate faulty cables etc. So I made one script for each direction and tested them individually. I now have communication both ways, so then I just need to get the logic for when to read and write right and I'm good. For anyone struggling with this in the future the following worked for me (the initialization of both sides are like before):

Lopy->Rpi

code on the lopy:

uart1.write('some string')

code on the Rpi:

print(ser.read(ser.in_waiting))

Rpi -> lopy

code on the Rpi:

ser.write('some string')

code on the lopy:

print(uart1.read())

Thanks for everyone helping me! :)

[hsn548]

@thomand1000 Hi Thomas, Can you please share your working code? as i am also having the same problem... I shall be really thankful.. :D

[thomand1000]

@hsn548 Here is the code I used to get it working. Be sure to place the jumper cables in the right place. I had the cables in the wrong place at first.

The following code works for me (i made a class for all the code on the RPI. Just import it and make a new PiGateway() and call its methods).

RPi code:

#run script as super user (e.g. $ sudo python3 sendlora.py)
import serial, time

class PiGateway:

    def __init__(self):
        self.ser = serial.Serial('/dev/serial0', 115200, timeout=10)

    def readFile(self, filename):
        f = open(filename,'r')
        content = f.read()
        f.close()
        return content

    def sendToLopy(self, device_id, data):
        n = 254
        id = "id=" + str(device_id)
        sendingDone = "sending done"
        #split data into 255 byte chunks for sending
        splitData = [data[i:i+n] for i in range(0, len(data), n)]
        #send device_id first. Wait one second between each packet to prevent collisions.
        self.ser.write(bytes(id, 'utf-8'))
        time.sleep(1)
        for dataChunk in splitData:
            #send each chunjk of data
            self.ser.write(bytes(dataChunk,'utf-8'))
            time.sleep(1)
        #send a string notifying that the transmission is done
        self.ser.write(bytes(sendingDone, 'utf-8'))   

    def getFromLopy(self):
        while True:
            if (self.ser.in_waiting > 0):
                received = self.ser.read(self.ser.in_waiting).decode('utf-8')
                return received
            time.sleep(1)

on the Lopy the code was the following:

import machine, time, pycom
pycom.heartbeat(False)
pycom.rgbled(0x000000)
uart1 = UART(1, 115300, bits=8, parity=None, stop=1)
uart1.init(baudrate=115200, bits=8, parity=None, stop=1)

while True:
    if uart1.any():
        receiving = uart1.read().decode('utf-8')
        #Do something with what you receive here
        #I used exec(receiving) -> entire code sent from Rpi to be executed on Lopy. It works
        time.sleep(5)
        #remember to break here sometime
    time.sleep(1)

Good luck

[testos]

Hello,

Sorry to ask, I'm novice in that field, coding is not an issue, but the electronic part is still a bit tricky for me....

Is it required to have the expansion board to connect the lopy to the rpi ?

In my case I have a pytrack + fipy and I was wondering if I can also send the gps and accelerometer data to a rapsberry Zero in a similar way ?

Looking at the rpi-zero io pins I can see that there are RX/TX and GND pins : http://raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-hardware/raspberry-pi-zero/rpi-zero-io-pins

Similar as the fipy : https://docs.pycom.io/datasheets/development/fipy.html ( RX1 / TX1 / GND ), can I use those ?

Thanks by advance.

[robert-hh]

@testos If you look at the code and pictures below by @thomand1000, it is actually using UART1 with TX1, RX1 and GND connected to the rPi.

[testos]

@robert-hh THanks for your quick answerr, yes I agree, but on the first picture, it's not the expansion board that he use ?

Br, Testos

[robert-hh]

@testos Yes, that's right. The picture shown an expansion board. On the pytrack, P3 and P4 are not that easily accessible. The connector below the Lopy has P4, P8, P10 and P11 available. So you have to re-assign the UART pin when you init the UART with the pins parameter, like:

from machine import UART
uart1 = UART(1, 115200, pins=("P8", "P4")) # P8=Tx, P4=Rx

[testos]

@robert-hh Thanks for the guidance, I will give a try during my holiday next week.

Just for clarification, the P3/P4 that you talk about are from the fipy ? and by doing the following ...

from machine import UART
uart1 = UART(1, 115200, pins=("P8", "P4")) # P8=Tx, P4=Rx

... it will re-assign them on the pytrack on the 2 pin P4/P8 on the External IO Header shown on the picture ?

Thanks again for your time.

[crumble]

Please note that P8 (G15) is used by the SD-Card interface. So you can't use them at the same time.

[robert-hh]

@crumble But then still P10 and P11 are available.

[testos]

Hello again,

@crumble, @robert-hh I can not use P11 (G22) instead of P8 ?

From the fipy documentation I can see that P11 is use by SPI ( MOSI ) but it's written :

Please note that the PIN assignments for UART1 (TX1/RX1), SPI (CLK, MOSI, MISO) and I2C (SDA, SCL) are defaults and can be changed in Software.

I can not just re-assign the mosi on a different pin ? I did not find yet doc on that.

Thanks

[robert-hh]

@testos As long as you do not use SPI this does not matter. And the SPI pins can be reassigned too. And P11 (External IO 8) seems not to be connected on pytrack. Using I diode tester, I cannot detect any connection. At P10 (external IO 7) seems to be used. At least is show something like a ESD diode behavior of an active chip pin.