I2C — Maple v0.0.12 Documentation

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# I2C

I2C is a crude and easy-to-hack serial protocol that requires only two wires/channels for communication between Maple and many other devices.

Contents

- Overview
- Hardware/Circuit Design
- Function Reference
- SMBus
- Recommended Reading

## Overview

Communication via I2C is broken up into messages. Every message is between a master device, which initiates the message, and a slave device, which responds.

Slaves are addressed using 7-bit addresses (up to 127 unique devices); 10-bit addressing is also possible. Every message consists of an arbitrary combination of 8-bit reads and writes as requested by the master. Higher level functionality, such as reading a particular register value, is achieved by writing to set the memory location then reading to pull out the data.

Note that the master/slave designation is on a message-by-message basis. Maple can act as both a master (messages initiated by user code) and slave device (responding to requests via configurable interrupt handlers) at the same time (though slave mode is currently unimplemented).

## Hardware/Circuit Design

Maple boards have two I2C ports. Maples reliably communicate with up to a 400kHz clock speed; this doesn’t translate into a 400kbps data rate except in extreme cases because of addressing and protocol overhead. We have tested clock speeds up to a megahertz and have had mixed results; in theory, it could be possible to achieve even higher rates, but signal quality degrades rapidly, and the bus becomes unreliable.

Proper wiring and pull-up resistor selection are essential when incorporating I2C into a circuit, especially with data rates above 100kHz. In the lab, we usually use approximately 5kΩ resistors with VCC (3.3V) as the high voltage, and try to connect the pullup voltage as close to the SDA and SCL pins as possible. We recommend looking at the ST reference website for I2C (see the recommended reading below), starting with a slow clock rate (10kHz), and, if possible, using an oscilloscope to debug any issues.

## Function Reference

Currently, only low-level support in i2c.h exists. A Wiring-style library is planned for a future release.

## SMBus

The STM32 microcontroller has hardware support for SMBus, but software for it is not yet implemented.

## Recommended Reading

- I2C Bus
- Wikipedia: I2C
- Arduino I2C/TWI reference
- ST Application Note on Advanced I2C Usage (PDF)

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