Connection Issues

Does the VS1053 have a pin labeled just as "CS"? When I look on Adafruit, I see a different looking board than what you have, but it does show a "CS" pin. This is the "select" pin that the master (MKR1000) uses to tell the slave to listen. Each slave must have its own "Chip Select" pin that cannot be shared. (Also call "slave select" or something similar.)

The next thing - How are you 'disconnecting' one or the other when you test? Just removing power or removing all wiring? And is all other wiring the same when the they work individually versus all wired in at ones?

In theory you should be able to have both all wired in, and run a test sketch one time for each board, just modifying the header info for the correct pinout. I would think that just removing power from the slave should effectively disable it so you can test the other board.

It's not very clear but looks like the pins labelled MCS and DCS here: https://learn.adafruit.com/assets/16643

go to XCS and XDCS pins in that order, on the VS1053 chip according to the circuit diag here: https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/assets/000/016/642/original/adafruit_products_schem.png?1400269761

It seems the XCS pin is the chip select for the SPI interface? (chip datasheet: https://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Components/SMD/vs1053.pdf  )

Rob, how are you confirming that the MP3 shield is not detected? If you've not got a 'scope, you can use an LED and a resistor (e.g. 220 ohms) on the CS pin (i.e. MCS I think) to see if it stays permanently lit, or if it briefly flickers to off.

Also, could it be a supply issue? The display and MP3 shield combined may use more power than expected. Are you running this from USB?

Hi Rob,

When the microcontroller is acting as a Master, then it's up to the slave devices (i.e. the VS1053 and RA8875 boards) to perform the tri-state operation, not the MKR board.

The MKR board just needs to instruct (by pulling the relevant CS line high) the slave devices to go tri-state on their MISO line. This is why it would be good to closely examine what is happening on your CS lines for the two devices. If the CS lines for both devices are simultaneously low, then that's a very bad thing.

The thing is, you don't need any SPI driver interaction to correctly control CS lines. You can define any connection on the MKR board to act as an output pin, and then write code (i.e. DigitalWrite) to pull the CS lines high or low under your own command, provided you put it at the correct location. It could well be the case that threads are executing that are pulling both CS lines low, That is not a MKR board issue, but could be a software or software driver issue.

This is all speculation though, and a way through this is to check the CS lines using the methods mentioned (ideally oscilloscope, or using LEDs).

A tri-state buffer chip could be used, but to me it sounds superfluous, unless there is some device-level reason why either of the devices is not going tri-state.

I don't know what the code looks like, but if you're executing a write to the display, it could be worth inserting a delay after that as a test, so that if the display is written in a different thread (I've never used the MKR board, I'm just guessing) then that thread has some time to complete before sending data to the VS chip.

Hello,

All I do is connect the RA8875 and the VS1053 to the MKR board and power it on and neither of them work even before I run any sketches.

I will try the LED process to see what is going on with the CS lines.

Hi Rob,

I had some questions:

(a) How do you confirm neither work before any sketches are run?

Are you observing power on LEDs or something?

(b) If you've got a way to confirm without running any sketch, what happens if you just disconnect the MISO line from one of the devices? Do the devices reach the failed state still, or remain in the working state? (prior to running the sketch, which of course will fail for one of the devices at least, since the MISO line is disconnected).

(c) What happens if you only connect one device fully, and only connect the power connections of the other device? Does one device work prior to running the sketch?

(d) What happens if, in scenario (c), you run the sketch?

Hello Shabaz,

I connected LED's with 220 ohm resistors and here is what happened:

1. With the RA8875 connected only, the CS LED would blink when powered on then it was low. When I touched the screen where the buttons were, the LED would brighten up as expected.

2. I connected the VS1053 with the RA8875 connected and added LED's for the board CS as well as the CS for the SD card.

     - The LED for the VS1053 board CS (MCS) would remain low the entire time.

     - The LED for the SD Card (DCS) would remain high the entire time.

     - The LED for the RA8875 would stay unlit the entire time (this is expected since the RA sketch is not running).

It seems as if the CS for the SD card is causing the systems to not play well together. Its staying high the entire time no matter which pin I plug it in and run the sketch.

If I run the Video sketch while everything is connected, the LCD will display the buttons but the VS1053 wont play the last audio files in memory like it does when I connect it stand alone on the MKR1000.

Since the MCS LED is low, I am taking it that this is normal until something is needed to be executed.

Since the DCS LED is high, I am taking it that this is not a normal situation. Again, this happens no matter which Pin I used. I even tried using an analog pin and the serial monitor asked if the SD card was connected.

With the LEDs in place, I will disconnect the RA8875 from the MKR and run the audio sketch again to see what could be causing the issues.

I will try with just disconnecting the power from the RA8875 first to see what that does.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

I am trying all that you are suggesting to see.

Hope my info helps... 

Hi Rob,

I'm not sure where the LEDs are connected (to ground, or to +ve, or across CS pins) so the information doesn't help me, but I think you've got the right idea, to use LEDs to examine the state of the CS pins if you don't have access to a 'scope.

The LED info isn't as meaningful until the sketch is run, because the CS pins are under the control of the MKR board and not the slave devices.

Also, I didn't understand your earlier text:

Hello,

All I do is connect the RA8875 and the VS1053 to the MKR board and power it on and neither of them work even before I run any sketches.

and I asked some questions related to it, specifically:

(a) How do you confirm neither work before any sketches are run?

Are you observing power on LEDs or something?

Anyway, to get to the bottom of this, I believe you just need to to confirm you have sufficient power, then observe what the CS pins do, and this should provide enough information to troubleshoot.

At some stage you may need to insert delays in the code and slowly see when the CS lines are asserted and deasserted, and see if it matches with what you expect.

Hi Rob,

I'm not sure where the LEDs are connected (to ground, or to +ve, or across CS pins) so the information doesn't help me, but I think you've got the right idea, to use LEDs to examine the state of the CS pins if you don't have access to a 'scope.

The LED info isn't as meaningful until the sketch is run, because the CS pins are under the control of the MKR board and not the slave devices.

Also, I didn't understand your earlier text:

Hello,

All I do is connect the RA8875 and the VS1053 to the MKR board and power it on and neither of them work even before I run any sketches.

and I asked some questions related to it, specifically:

(a) How do you confirm neither work before any sketches are run?

Are you observing power on LEDs or something?

Anyway, to get to the bottom of this, I believe you just need to to confirm you have sufficient power, then observe what the CS pins do, and this should provide enough information to troubleshoot.

At some stage you may need to insert delays in the code and slowly see when the CS lines are asserted and deasserted, and see if it matches with what you expect.

Hi Shabaz,

I have the LED's connected to ground on on the MKR and also across the CS pins for the RA8875, VS1053 and the SD card on the VS1053.

When the system powers on, the LED for the RA8875 goes high while the images are appearing on the screen. Then it goes lower meaning that there is some light bit very dim. This is a good thing and when I touch the screen, the LED goes high because of the touch triggers. This is also a good thing.

Now I have all the wiring connected to both the VS1053 to the MKR and the RA8875.

The code for the video is working fine and I commented out all the code for the VS1053.

One at a time I am removing the // from the code line by line for the VS1053 to see what is causing the SD CS pin to go high.

With the RA8875 working as it should, I added the SPI wires for the VS1053 and power then ran my code and removed the // from the other pin settings for the code.

Here is where I am at with the code, removing the // from each line at a time and watching out for the SD CS pin to go high and stay high preventing everything from working.

I will let you know what I find out.

Here is the code for the VS1053 that worked before:

// These are the pins used for the breakout example

#define BREAKOUT_RESET  9      // VS1053 reset pin (output)

#define BREAKOUT_CS     A4     // VS1053 chip select pin (output)

#define BREAKOUT_DCS    A5      // VS1053 Data/command select pin (output)

// These are the pins used for the music maker shield

#define SHIELD_RESET  9      // VS1053 reset pin (unused!)

#define SHIELD_CS     A4      // VS1053 MCS - chip select pin (output)

#define SHIELD_DCS    A5      // VS1053 DCS - data select pin (output)

// These are common pins between breakout and shield

#define CARDCS 4     // VS1053 CCS - Card chip select pin

// DREQ should be an Int pin, see http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/attachInterrupt

#define DREQ 0       // VS1053 DREQ - Data request, ideally an Interrupt pin

Adafruit_RA8875 tft = Adafruit_RA8875(RA8875_CS, RA8875_RESET);

Adafruit_VS1053_FilePlayer musicPlayer = Adafruit_VS1053_FilePlayer(SHIELD_RESET, SHIELD_CS, SHIELD_DCS, DREQ, CARDCS);

Hello Shabaz

I went through the code un-commenting each line and testing it by executing the code and when I came to this part of the code, the LED for the MCS went high and the RA8875 LED CS pin went high as well.

/* initialize the music player */

  if (! musicPlayer.begin()) {

    Serial.println(F("Couldn't find VS1053, do you have the right pins defined?"));

    while (1);

The RA8875 initializes and the LED goes high and low as the touch screen portion runs and then goes back to dim.

When it is time for the VS1053 to initialize, it does not happen. The LED PIN for the MCS goes high and the CS for the RA8875 goes high and everything stops.

I get the message about having the correct pins and even when I change the MCS pin to another area of the MKR, update the code to reflect that pin, it still goes high when it tries to initialize and stays high which causes the RA8875 CS to stay high as well and nothing works.

I have also tried analog pins and it does the same thing.

If I comment out the above code and all the music player code after that, reset the MKR1000, then the display works fine and the touch buttons work.

It is when I remove the comment (//) that the code messes up.

void setup()

{

  Serial.begin(9600);

  Serial.println(F("RA8875 start"));

  Serial.println(F("VS1053 start"));

  Serial.println(F("SD start"));

  /* Initialise the display using 'RA8875_800x480' */

  if (!tft.begin(RA8875_800x480)) {

    Serial.println(F("RA8875 Not Found!"));

    while (1);

  }

  Serial.println(F("RA8875 Found"));

  /* initialize the music player */

  if (! musicPlayer.begin()) {

    Serial.println(F("Couldn't find VS1053, do you have the right pins defined?"));

    while (1);

}

  Serial.println(F("VS1053 found"));

  musicPlayer.sineTest(0x44, 500);    // Makes a tone to indicate VS1053 is working

  if (!SD.begin(CARDCS)) {

    Serial.println(F("SD failed, or not present"));

   while (1);  // don't do anything more

  }

   Serial.println(F("SD Found"));

Now if I connect each of these devices separately from each other to the MKR device, the work fine. It is just when these two devices are connected together that there is a conflict even when they are not using the same pins. The only pins that are the same for both are the SPI pins.

I am at a loss at what to do next.

Hi Rob,

At least it is isolated to a single function call, it should be possible to examine the source code for that function, to see what is going on. Basically, you may need to make edits to the driver code. I'm not a frequent Arduino user so I can only help generally, not specifically unfortunately, but if you have access to the library code (i.e. if it isn't a compiled library which you cannot modify) then that would be the place to look.

Rob - what power supply are you using? Is it just plugging into a computer or using a wall-wart? Do you know how may amps (or milliamps) the supply is rated for?

Your code looks like it just stops when it fails to connect via the "while(1);" line; so that could be the reason why things stop functioning after that point. The code just goes into an infinite loop until the controller is power cycled.

Hi James,

I am using the USB cable. Perhaps the MKR1000 unit does not provide as much power as the UNO.

The sketches work fine on the UNO when the RA8875 and VS1053 are connected to the UNO.

I ordered and will be receiving a battery that will connect to the MKR1000 to see if that helps with the power issue and will check voltages today to see if that could be the problem.

Thanks for your input!