Now that my robot has a Raspberry Pi on board I wanted to be able to send commands from the Raspberry Pi to the Arduino telling the robot what to do. In the future I also want the Arduino to be able to send sensor data back to the Raspberry Pi, so I need two way communication.
I created a simple test sketch (program) for the Arduino that would wait for a command then take action once one was received. The complete sketch can be found here.
I also created a simple python program that could run on the Pi and output commands over the Pi‘s UART connections. The compete python program can be found here.
Now the problem with connecting the Pi‘s UART pins directly to the Arduino‘s serial pins is that the Ardunio operates with 5v logic and the Pi operates with 3.3v logic. Signals from the Arduino to the Pi would be 5v and could damage the Pi. Signals from the Pi to the Arduino would be 3.3v and may not be high enough for the Arduino to recognise. My solution was to build a voltage level shifter.
I‘m using a 2N2222 transistor connected in a common emitter mode configuration to amplify the 3.3v from the Pi to 5v. However this configuration has the undesired side effect of inverting the signal. When the 3.3v input is high, the 5v output is low. So I‘ve added a second transistor to invert the signal back to its original state.
To lower the 5v from the Arduino I‘m using a simple voltage divider. In theory I could use any value of resistors as long as R6 is twice the value of R5 I will get two thirds of the input voltage at the output. Two thirds of 5v just so happens to be 3.3v, perfect.
For more detail: Communicating over serial between Raspberry Pi and Arduino.
