Connecting Nicla Sense ME to an Adafruit micro-SD Card reader

Hi everyone,
I am a PhD student at Politecnico di Torino in Italy and I am currently working on Arduino Nicla Sense ME. The main purpose of the study is to use the sensors on the Arduino and to save the collected data on a micro-SD connected to the board to work as a datalogger.
The storage device is the Micro SD Card Breakout Board from Adafruit (picture below).

I am following the tutorial on how to connect this board to Arduino available on Adafruit:

The Arduino Nicla Sense ME Pinout is the following:

I am connecting the pins as follows:

  • 5V pin on micro-SD board with Vin on Nicla
  • GND pin on micro-SD board with GND on Nicla
  • CS on micro-SD board with CS on Nicla (pin 29)
  • DI on micro-SD board with COPI on NIcla (pin 27) in substitution of MOSI on the Adafruit tutorial
  • D0 on micro-SD board with CIPO on NIcla (pin 28) in substitution of MISO on the Adafruit tutorial
  • CLK on micro-SD board with SCLK on NIcla (pin 11)

Then I try to upload the CardInfo.ino example sketch of "SD.h" library changing the
chipSelect variable to 29 as it should be the Nicla pin for CS.

/*
  SD card test

  This example shows how use the utility libraries on which the'
  SD library is based in order to get info about your SD card.
  Very useful for testing a card when you're not sure whether its working or not.

  The circuit:
    SD card attached to SPI bus as follows:
 ** MOSI - pin 11 on Arduino Uno/Duemilanove/Diecimila
 ** MISO - pin 12 on Arduino Uno/Duemilanove/Diecimila
 ** CLK - pin 13 on Arduino Uno/Duemilanove/Diecimila
 ** CS - depends on your SD card shield or module.
 		Pin 4 used here for consistency with other Arduino examples


  created  28 Mar 2011
  by Limor Fried
  modified 9 Apr 2012
  by Tom Igoe
*/
// include the SD library:
#include <SD.h>
#include <SPI.h>

// set up variables using the SD utility library functions:
Sd2Card card;
SdVolume volume;
SdFile root;

// change this to match your SD shield or module;
// Arduino Ethernet shield: pin 4
// Adafruit SD shields and modules: pin 10
// Sparkfun SD shield: pin 8
// MKRZero SD: SDCARD_SS_PIN
const int chipSelect = 29;

void setup() {
  // Open serial communications and wait for port to open:
  Serial.begin(115200);
  while (!Serial) {
    ; // wait for serial port to connect. Needed for native USB port only
  }
  SPI.begin();

  Serial.print("\nInitializing SD card...");

  // we'll use the initialization code from the utility libraries
  // since we're just testing if the card is working!
  if (!card.init(SPI_HALF_SPEED, chipSelect)) {
    Serial.println("initialization failed. Things to check:");
    Serial.println("* is a card inserted?");
    Serial.println("* is your wiring correct?");
    Serial.println("* did you change the chipSelect pin to match your shield or module?");
    while (1);
  } else {
    Serial.println("Wiring is correct and a card is present.");
  }

  // print the type of card
  Serial.println();
  Serial.print("Card type:         ");
  switch (card.type()) {
    case SD_CARD_TYPE_SD1:
      Serial.println("SD1");
      break;
    case SD_CARD_TYPE_SD2:
      Serial.println("SD2");
      break;
    case SD_CARD_TYPE_SDHC:
      Serial.println("SDHC");
      break;
    default:
      Serial.println("Unknown");
  }

  // Now we will try to open the 'volume'/'partition' - it should be FAT16 or FAT32
  if (!volume.init(card)) {
    Serial.println("Could not find FAT16/FAT32 partition.\nMake sure you've formatted the card");
    while (1);
  }

  Serial.print("Clusters:          ");
  Serial.println(volume.clusterCount());
  Serial.print("Blocks x Cluster:  ");
  Serial.println(volume.blocksPerCluster());

  Serial.print("Total Blocks:      ");
  Serial.println(volume.blocksPerCluster() * volume.clusterCount());
  Serial.println();

  // print the type and size of the first FAT-type volume
  uint32_t volumesize;
  Serial.print("Volume type is:    FAT");
  Serial.println(volume.fatType(), DEC);

  volumesize = volume.blocksPerCluster();    // clusters are collections of blocks
  volumesize *= volume.clusterCount();       // we'll have a lot of clusters
  volumesize /= 2;                           // SD card blocks are always 512 bytes (2 blocks are 1KB)
  Serial.print("Volume size (Kb):  ");
  Serial.println(volumesize);
  Serial.print("Volume size (Mb):  ");
  volumesize /= 1024;
  Serial.println(volumesize);
  Serial.print("Volume size (Gb):  ");
  Serial.println((float)volumesize / 1024.0);

  Serial.println("\nFiles found on the card (name, date and size in bytes): ");
  root.openRoot(volume);

  // list all files in the card with date and size
  root.ls(LS_R | LS_DATE | LS_SIZE);
}

void loop(void) {
}

On the serial monitor I obtain an error as follows:

Initializing SD card...
++ MbedOS Fault Handler ++

FaultType: HardFault

Context:
R   0: 00000000
R   1: FFFFFFFF
R   2: 200093CC
R   3: 00000001
R   4: 159A55E5
R   5: 200000F8
R   6: 200004E8
R   7: 00016FF9
R   8: 000001D0
R   9: 00000000
R  10: 00000000
R  11: 00000000
R  12: 00018075
SP   : 20003F70
LR   : 0001836B
PC   : 00042604
xPSR : 010F0000
PSP  : 20003F50
MSP  : 2000FFC0
CPUID: 410FC241
HFSR : 40000000
MMFSR: 00000000
BFSR : 00000082
UFSR : 00000000
DFSR : 00000000
AFSR : 00000000
BFAR : 159A55E1
Mode : Thread
Priv : Privileged
Stack: PSP

-- MbedOS Fault Handler --



++ MbedOS Error Info ++
Error Status: 0x80FF013D Code: 317 Module: 255
Error Message: Fault exception
Location: 0x42604
Error Value: 0x20009354
Current Thread: main Id: 0x20003FFC Entry: 0x19193 StackSize: 0xC00 StackMem: 0x200033D8 SP: 0x20003F70 
For more info, visit: https://mbed.com/s/error?error=0x80FF013D&tgt=NICLA
-- MbedOS Error Info --

Can someone help me on finding the problem?
I tried to connect the micro-SD board to an Arduino Uno following Adafruit tutorial (linked before) and it correctly works. So I do not understand if it is a matter of coding or wrong wiring for the Nicla Sense ME.

Thank you very much,
Mirco Lo Monaco

Hi,

I had the same problem connecting a Nicla Sense ME and a micro-SD Card reader.
It appeared for me that 115200 as baud rate was too high for my system.
In addition, Vin on Nicla is not an power output but an input, it seems you can't power the Card reader with it. Using an other source for the card reader solved one of my initialization problems.

Besides, are you sure about the number of each pin ? I tried "SDFat.h" library that told me that the SS pin is 6...

I hope it will help you.

Would you mind posting the code and wiring diagram you're using? I tried to change the baud rate to 9600 and the powering the SD board with an arduino uno to provide the 5V but still get the initialization failed. I confirmed the SD card board wasn't dead as it works with the uno with default connections.

Hello everybody, I am interested in the issue and I wonder if this problem has been solved. Thanks for updates.

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