Reading inverted RS-232 data



  • Just some notes in case anyone has to read data from a serial RS-232 device that caused me some headache:

    Serial UART and serial RS-232 data differ in voltage swing and polarity.

    A Gpy expects to see 5 V as a logical "1" and 0 V as a logical "0".

    But RS-232 defines about -15 V as a logical "1" and +15 V as logical "0" - what is completely invers.

    Given You only want to read from an RS-232 device, one can use a simple solution of a diode (rectifier) and two resistors (voltage divider) to attach the TX wire of the serial device to the RX1 pin of a Gpy.

    But there is still the problem of the inverted data bits polarity. There really should be a simple python solution like

    uart.init(9600, bits=8, parity=None, stop=1, invert=UART.INV_RX | UART.INV_TX)
    

    as suggested by other authors.

    Meanwhile, however, we can achieve the same goal by setting the required UART bits ourselves:

    UART_CONF0_REG = machine.mem32[0x3FF50020] | (1<<22) | (1<<19)
    machine.mem32[0x3FF50020] = UART_CONF0_REG
    

    will do the trick and voila! the RS-232 data is received correctly.

    (By the way: 0xFF40020 is the serial console, 0xFF50020 is TX1/RX1 and 0xFF6E020 is tied to the LTE modem.)



  • @Elizar That#s a good hint. There is also a PR #362 outstanding since Nov. 2019 for UART inverted mode, which supports that in a more API consistent fashion. And that PR is compatible to the mainstream MicroPython.


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