I am using a standalone ATMEGA328P microcontroller with a Wiznet W5500 ethernet controller. I am using the standard SPI pins that the library uses to talk to the W5500 controller: pin10:SS, pin11:MOSI, pin12:MISO, pin13:SCK. I am using a number of other ATMEGA328Ps on the SPI bus in slave mode that I have control over so as not to talk on MISO when not selected (what might otherwise happen with commercial SPI devices).
My question is does the ethernet library pull pin 10 low when communicating with the W5500, and when done, pull that pin high? From what I've read the W5500 does not communicate on MISO unless its SS is pulled low. I am wondering if I have to manually pull pin 10 high when I go to communicate with my other devices (pull their SS pins low). My goal is to take information from the ethernet controller and send it via SPI to the other slave devices.
My question is does the ethernet library pull pin 10 low when communicating with the W5500, and when done, pull that pin high?
Why not put a multimeter on the pin, and find out? Or, look at the source code?
Given that it is possible to read from, and write to, the SD card on the Ethernet shield, to get data to send to the client, or to save the server response in a file, it seems obvious that the answer is yes.
If you don't trust that answer, and can't find an answer you trust, YOU can always pull pin 10 HIGH or LOW as YOU desire.
I don't have the ethernet shield, but a standalone W5500 connected to a master microcontroller on a custom PCB. I am still soldering all of the ICs, passives and other components to my PCB so I wanted to get a feel for what to expect before I got to a point where I can power the board up.
Thank you for your answer, I will read into the library code to get a feel for everything. This is good, about pulling pin 10 low/high, the reference in the instructions saying we can't use pin 10 was throwing me off as I wasn't sure if I was allowed to do a pinmode>output, pin10>set high.
Pin 10 controls whether the Arduino is an SPI slave or an SPI master. Pin 10 must be set as OUTPUT to make the Arduino an SPI master. As an output, it can be set HIGH or LOW, allowing the pin to also be used as a slave select pin.