Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Coding and general discussion relating to user created compiler modules

Moderators: David Barker, Jerry Messina

Post Reply
Jerry Messina
Swordfish Developer
Posts: 1469
Joined: Fri Jan 30, 2009 6:27 pm
Location: US

Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Post by Jerry Messina » Sun Jan 06, 2019 3:16 pm

I've recently been playing around with some of the mikroE Click boards. These are really handy for putting together prototypes and one-of systems.

I put some example code on the user modules wiki if anyone wants to give it a shot.
Right now it's mostly just simple code to check out the I2C, SPI, and UART mikroBUS connections, but it'd be nice to do a family of libraries.

There are a LOT of boards to pick from... anyone interested? If so, what would you like to see?

bitfogav
Registered User
Registered User
Posts: 169
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Post by bitfogav » Wed Jan 09, 2019 5:46 pm

Thanks for sharing this information Jerry, I've got several Click boards from LED displays to some sensors I been meaning to play with, I'll have to dig them out :)

Jerry Messina
Swordfish Developer
Posts: 1469
Joined: Fri Jan 30, 2009 6:27 pm
Location: US

Re: Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Post by Jerry Messina » Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:11 am

Do you know how you're going to interface to them?

One of the hardest parts I found was trying to match up the mikrobus pin mappings vs the devices on some of the development boards.

I couldn't find one overall winner... each seemed to have their own pros and cons.

bitfogav
Registered User
Registered User
Posts: 169
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Post by bitfogav » Fri Jan 11, 2019 5:47 pm

I have the MikroE UNO Click shield and a Firewing PIC18 board Jerry, I haven't looked at the corresponding pin mappings yet though.

If all the pin mappings doesn't match up then I might make my own UNO Shield for the Firewing PIC18 board, which I'll be happy to share or at least share the PCB Gerber files :)


Are these the only problematic issues?

1.mikroBUS uart is connected to UART1, which is normally used by the FW18 USB-UART main board.
2.mikroBUS INT_D2 and INT_D3 signals connect to the FW18 board ICSP RB7 and RB6 pins, so using the ICD is problematic.

Jerry Messina
Swordfish Developer
Posts: 1469
Joined: Fri Jan 30, 2009 6:27 pm
Location: US

Re: Using Swordfish With MikroBUS Click Adapter Boards

Post by Jerry Messina » Fri Jan 11, 2019 6:49 pm

So far that's all I've run across. If you do the mods I documented to the mikroe UNO shield it "fixes" both those issues, but I've only tried a few modules so I don't know what else may be problematic (no PWM or ADC for example).

The UART one is the biggest headache. I didn't want to loose the FW USB-UART (since that's the main way to communicate to the boards),
and I couldn't find a good generic way of remapping/reconnecting the pins so that you could use UART2 for the mikrobus UART without losing something else.

Device-wise, the 26/27K40 (and Q10) were the best choices I've found. They have two uarts and two mssp modules, and a pretty flexible PPS mapping.

If you come up with something better I'm all ears!

btw - I know I didn't document all the various options very well, so if it gets confusing yell.

Post Reply