Table of Contents

I2C

I2C (pronounced eye-squared-sea, or eye-two-sea) was originally developed by Phillips as a protocol for synchronous serial communication between integrated circuits. It has a master and one or more slaves sharing the same data bus. Instead of selecting the slaves by using a dedicated chip select signal like SPI, I2C uses an addressing mechanism to communicate with the selected device. This addressing method saves one I/O pin per slave.

Before data is transferred, the master transmits the 7-bit address of the slave device it wants to communicate with. It also sends one bit indicating whether it wants to send data to the slave or receive data from the slave. When a slave sees its address on the bus, it will acknowledge its presence. At this point, the master can send or receive data. The master will start data transfers with a "start condition" before sending an address or data. The master ends the data transfer with a "stop condition."

The two wires for I2C communication are called the SDA and SCL lines. SDA stands for Serial Data, and SCL is Serial Clock.

Note

I2C bus speed can be either 100,000 bits/second (standard mode) or 400,000 bits/second (fast mode).

I2C Master

This is a partial demo showing the use of I2C in master mode.

var settings = new I2cConnectionSettings(0x1C, 100_000); //The slave's address and the bus speed.
var controller = I2cController.FromName(SC20100.I2cBus.I2c1);
var device = controller.GetDevice(settings);

device.Write(new byte[] { 1, 2 }); //Write something
device.WriteRead(...); //This is good for reading register

I2C Slave

This is a partial demo showing the use of I2C in slave mode.

var i2cControllers = I2cController.FromName(SC20260.I2cBus.I2c1);
         
i2cControllers.ReadBufferSize = 1024; // Default 256
i2cControllers.WriteBufferSize = 1024; // Default 256 

i2cControllers.ClearReadBuffer(); // Clear 
i2cControllers.ClearWriteBuffer(); // Clear

var i2cSetting = new I2cConnectionSettings(0x48, I2cMode.Slave); // Enable slave mode

i2cSetting.EnableClockStretching = true;

var i2cDevice = i2cControllers.GetDevice(i2cSetting);
	  
i2cDevice.ErrorReceived += (sender, args) => Debug.WriteLine("Error received " + args.Error);

i2cDevice.FrameReceived += (sender, args) => {
	switch (args.Event) {
		case I2cTransaction.MasterWrite:
			Debug.WriteLine("Mastester is writing");
			break;

		case I2cTransaction.MasterRead:
			Debug.WriteLine("Mastester is reading");
			// Send data
			sender.Write(data);
			break;

		case I2cTransaction.MasterStop:
			Debug.WriteLine("Done a frame!");
			break;
	}
};

Software I2C

Users have the option to drive (bit bang) I2C bus in software over any of the available GPIOs.

var sda = GpioController.GetDefault().OpenPin(SC20260.GpioPin.PB9);
var scl = GpioController.GetDefault().OpenPin(SC20260.GpioPin.PB8);

var controllers = I2cController.FromName(SC20260.I2cBus.Software, sda, scl);

The internal pull-ups on the GPIO pins used by software I2C can be enabled. This is sufficient in most cases but adding 2.2K external is better.

var controllers = I2cController.FromName(SC20260.I2cBus.Software, sda, scl, true);
Tip

Software generated buses are slower and use more resources, but can be used on any pins.

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