Is it possibile to use Piface CAD and wolfson audio card in the same time?

Question

Hi guys,

I'm planning to buy Wolfson audio card for my rpi, and play with volumio (http://volumio.org).

I'm interested also in PiFace CAD; is there a way to make those two product work together?

Thanks, bye bye!

dougiel · Accepted Answer

No, sorry it doesn't appear to be possible.

There's no stacking header pins on either device. So you simply can't fit them both on a single RPi. The PiFaceCAD will fit a PiFace Expander because it only uses the SPI pins for the MCP23S17 chip that drives the HD44870 LCD.

The Wolfson board also uses the P5 extra GPIO pins so won't work with a PiFace Expander. I'm also not sure whether the SPI pins are routed to the special connector on the Wolfson board (would need to read the schematics for that).

fvan · Answer

I don't know how you planned to connect the two, but since the Wolfson card requires connections to the P5 header, it won't be compatible with the Pi Rack for example. Frederick

Former Member · Answer

No, I don't think so. The Wolfson card uses almost all the GPIO, including the SPI port. The Piface CAD also requires the SPI port, and some other GPIO. You could use an i2c port expander and a display with i2c interface to get the same functions. i2c is a shared bus. You could use the serial port, which is brought to pins on the Wolfson board (Rx Tx) an connect with serial to a microcontroller for i/o and display (or use a serial ICD). You could use USB display / IO module(s). See: Wolfson could have given us GPIO access What GPIO pins are used by the Piface CAD shield?