Part 3: Using Serial Port on Universal Expansion Board

Prerequisites:

Using Serial Port with the Raspberry Pi – Connecting Raspberry Pi’s Serial Port with the onboard STM32 MCU

At first, we need to attach the Raspberry Pi to the Universal Expansion Board.
RPI RS232 to STM32r

  1. CPLD Configuration
  2. This part is pretty easy since we only need to map the Raspberry Pi’s UART to the onboard STM32 MCU’s UART1 using the CPLD. The following Verilog code can implement the idea:

    module RS232(RXD_in,TXD_in,RXD_out,TXD_out);
    
    input   RXD_in, TXD_in;
    output  RXD_out,TXD_out;
    
    assign RXD_out = RXD_in;
    assign TXD_out = TXD_in;
    
    endmodule
    

    Navigate to Quartus -> Assignments -> Pin Planner. The IO need to be configured as following picture.
    RPI RS232 to STM32 CPLD
    We can flash the design into the CPLD right now.

  3. Linux Configuration
  4. Edit /boot/cmdline.txt:

    sudo vim /boot/cmdline.txt
    

    Originally it contained:

    dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=ttyAMA0,115200 kgdboc=ttyAMA0,115200 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
    

    Deleted the two parameters involving the serial port (ttyAMA0) to get the following:

    dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline rootwait
    

    Edit /etc/inittab:

    sudo vi /etc/inittab
    

    We need to comment out following lines in /etc/inittab:

    #Spawn a getty on Raspberry Pi serial line
    T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyAMA0 115200 vt100
    
  5. Testing
  6. Reboot (sudo reboot) to confirm that kernel output is no longer going to the serial. Only one line Uboot message will be printed out during the booting.
    RPI RS232 to STM32 RS232 Output1
    Install the minicom on the Raspberry Pi:

    sudo apt-get install minicom
    

    And run it:

    minicom -b 9600 -o -D /dev/ttyAMA0
    

    Reset the onboard STM32 MCU, the following information will be printed out:
    RPI RS232 to STM32 RS232 Output2
    Eventually, the raspberry Pi can talk to the onboard STM32 MCU now.