The daisy chaining is used to send commands via the SPI from the Uno to several X-NUCLEO-IHM01A1 boards.
The purpose of these commands can be to enable/disable the briges, set the parameters of the L6474 (to dynamically adjust the torques for examples), to know the position, to get the alarm status (over current detection, over temperature,...) of the L6474
So, to use daisy chaining you will first need to have 2 or 3 X-NUCLEO-IHM01A1 boards.
These boards have two crossover pins that are combined with some shunt (0K) resistors to propagate the SDO of one board to the SDI of the following one.
By default, the shunt resistors board are set for 1 board configuration (R1, R4, R7, R12 resistors mounted).
For 2 boards configuration,
- the first board you have to move these resistors to have R1, R4, R7, R10 resistors mounted
- the second must have R2, R5, R8, R12 resistors mounted
For 3 boards configuration,
- the first must have R1, R4, R7, R10 resistors mounted
- the second must have R2, R5, R8, R11 resistors mounted
- the third must have R3, R6, R9, R12 resistors mounted
(to have more details you can have a look in paragraph 2.2 of ST document " UM1857: Stepper motor driver expansion board based on L6474 " that you can find here: http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/active/en/resource/technical/document/user_manual/DM00156746.pdf)
Once the shunt resistors are correctly mounted, you only have to plug on board on top of the other to have a 2 or 3 boards configuration.
Resistors R25 and R24 could also be moved to use another CS (chip select) line or Clock line. But in my case, I used the default configuration.
Moreover, to fully understand daisy chaining you have to know that:
- all boards share the same clock and chip select.
- the SDO of the Uno is linked to the SDI of the first shield
- then each SDO of one shield is linked to the SDI of the following shield (thanks to the two additional crossover pins)
- the SDO of the last shieled is linked to the SDI of the UNO
- the data are transmitted byte by byte.
- When the CS is high, the SPI works as a delay line: at each clock enabling , a byte is read from the SDI and pushed to the SDO
- When the CS is released, the L6474 will interpret the available byte at the SDI and insert the answer at the SDO
And if you want the full details, you can have a look of this application note (still from ST):
"AN4290: dSPIN, cSPIN and easySPIN family communication protocol":
and specifically at figure 9 where there is a time diagram with the clock and several devices!
From the point of view of a library user, the daisy chaining is hidden, and its use is quite simple as you only have to specify the index (from 0 to 2) of the targetted board to use it!
For example, if you want to get the status of the first board you have to write:
uint16_t statusRegister = myL6474.CmdGetStatus(0);
to get the status of the second shield:
uint16_t statusRegister = myL6474.CmdGetStatus(1);
to get the status of the third shield:
uint16_t statusRegister = myL6474.CmdGetStatus(2);
To set the torque regulation current of the first shield board to 625 mA (caution only multiple of 31.25 are supported):
myL6474.CmdSetParam(0, L6474_TVAL, 625);
To set the torque regulation current of the third shield board to 1000 mA
myL6474.CmdSetParam(2, L6474_TVAL, 1000);
