Let’s Make a Drone

EE and ME Departments
IIT Bombay, Mumbai

Academic Year: 2024-2025, Semester: I (Autumn)

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 Part I

Making a Drone

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1 Drone Components

2 Block Diagram

3 Terminology

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 Drone Components

Designing the Drone Top Down

Let us design our drone “top down” – from specifications to

components.
What do we expect from our drone? . . .
First of all – it should fly!
We’ll need powerful motors with propellers which
push air downwards, so that the drone rises up in
reaction. We’ll use 4 such motors.

Due to rotation of propellers, the drone itself will try

to rotate in the opposite direction. To prevent this,
we’ll use two propellers rotating clockwise while the
other two rotate anticlockwise, with the tilt of
propellers so adjusted that all push the air
downwards.

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 Drone Components

What do we need to make the drone?

The motors will need to be driven with

heavy currents – and we should be able to
control their speeds.
so we need motor drivers which can
supply the required drive voltages and
currents and can control their speed using
Pulse Width Modulation.
We also need a source of power – a high
current battery is required.
We should minimize the weight of all
components, so that it is easy for the
drone to get air-borne. In particular, the
frame should be made with a light, but
strong material.
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 Drone Components

What else do we need to make the drone? . . .

The Drone should be stable in its flight.

How do we determine what PWM data to

send to the electronic speed controllers
such that it is stable? – We need sensors
to determine the current angular
orientation and angular speeds of the
drone to adjust the relative speeds of the
four motors. So we need a sensor card for
this.
Who will send PWM data to the motor
driver (– the electronic speed controller)?
Obviously, some sort of micro-controller is
required and we’ll use our familiar Arduino
Nano for it.
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 Drone Components

How do we command the drone?

We should be able to control the flying drone from the

ground..
We should be able to send commands to
the drone from an Earth position. This
requires some wireless connectivity.
There are several options for it – We’ll use
a Joystick Controller of our own design to
send the data and an on-board WiFi unit
to receive it.
We’ll use a node-MCU with WiFi to receive commands and to
pass these on to the Arduino Nano.
The node MCU is also a micro-controller card like Arduino Nano. It
uses a 32 bit ARM micro-controller and has an on-board WiFi unit.

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 Drone Components

What else do we need

We have listed most of the modules we need to
perform the required functions on the drone.
in addition to these, we need to generate 5 V
from the battery voltage to power various
boards.
This is done using a switch mode buck
converter.
To distribute power to different components,
we need a power distribution board and
various wires and connectors.
For securely mounting all these components,
we shall need mechanical parts such as
mounting brackets, nuts and bolts etc.
A list of all components required for the project is called a Bill of
Materials or BOM.
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 Drone Components

Bill of Materials

Sensor: Intertial Measurement

BLDC motor: GT2205
Unit (IMU) MPU-6050
– 2x CW, 2x CCW
x1
Propellers: Orange HD 5152 pair 1
WiFi unit: Node MCU ESP 8266
pair CW, 1 pair CCW
x1
Electronic Speed Controller: ESC –
Power Distribution Board 100A x1
SimonK 30 A x4
Battery Charger: IMAX B3 AC x1
Frame: Carbon Fibre x1
On board Flight Controller: Arduino
Battery: LiPo 3S Orange 1800
Nano x1
mAh x1
XT 60 Cable With Male connector,
BEC Buck converter: UBEC-5V/3A
Pigtail
Transmitter: Use your mobile with
Bullet connector: Amass PolyMax
app
3.5mm Gold 2pairs x6
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 Block Diagram

Putting it all together

LIPO
UBEC
Joystick Battery
5V/3A
Controller User Commands 11.1 V
Vin D4 Vin
D8
Rx
D9
All Gnd pins
D2
D10
D1 D4 ESC 1 M1
WiFi D11
Node MCU (PWM) D5
ESC 2 M2
ARDUINO
PRINTED NANO D6
5V ESC 3 M3
ANTENNA
SDA
VCC A4 D7
ESC 4 M4
MPU 6050 A5
SCL
Sensor Data through I2C

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 Terminology

Terminology

It is useful to understand terms which are frequently used for flying and
sailing objects. Consider an object flying along the x direction.
Yaw: is rotation around the vertical axis.
(Left and right turn from the
direction of motion). Yaw
z
Roll: is rotation around the direction of y
motion (x axis).
Roll
(Movement of wing tips in x

opposite up/down direction).

Pitch: is rotation around the y axis. Pitch
(Up/down movement of the nose
of the aircraft with respect to its
tail).

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 Terminology

Commanding the Drone

To fly the drone, we need to send commands to it to control and adjust:

1 Its speed – (throttle),

2 its left-right turn orientation (Yaw),
3 its up/down orientation (Pitch) and
4 its left-right tilt (Roll).

This will be done using a Joystick controller of our own design . . .

The controller has two joysticks . . . one to control throttle and yaw and
the other to control its pitch and roll.
We need to continuously measure these quantities and correct for
deviation from the desired values using PID control.
(Proportional/Integral/Differential compensation for errors).
How do we measure these? . . .
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 Part II

Sensors in the Drone

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4 Sensors
Accelerometers
Measurement of Angular Velocities
Coriolis Force
Gyroscope measurements

5 Calibration

6 Motion Control

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 Sensors Accelerometers

Measuring Acceleration
x
Accelerometers actually measure
force. Then a = F /m.
One way of measuring acceleration
is through the use of an inertial
mass.
Acceleration
The frame (shown hashed) is rigidly coupled to the moving body.
There is an inertial mass which is constrained to move along the
direction of motion. It is fixed to the frame through a spring.
As the body accelerates to the right, it leaves the inertial mass behind,
stretching the spring by x. Then,

k
−ma = kx so a = − x
m
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 Sensors Accelerometers

Differential Capacitance measurement

How do we measure very small displacements?

Moving ǫA ǫA
Fixed Fixed ∆C = −
xo − x xo + x
(xo + x) − (xo − x)
= ǫA
xo2 − x 2
2ǫA
so ∆C = x
xo2 − x2
∆C is linear in x if x << xo .
To ensure this, we use the principle
xo xo of force feedback.

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 Sensors Accelerometers

Principle of Force Balance

There is a trade off between sensitivity and range.

A sensitive sensor can be overloaded by a large input value.

How can we control a large value with good sensitivity?

This can be done by using force balance.

Let X be a large value of some measurand (say force).
We balance it with a controlled force Fc , and measure the small
resultant X − Fc with good sensitivity.
Since Fc is known, we can now calculate X.

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 Sensors Accelerometers

A feedback loop subtracts Fc

from X and adjusts Fc such
X X - Fc
Sensor V = S (X - Fc) that X − Fc is very small.
S
A sensitive sensor measures
the small value X − Fc ,
Fc
Fc = A V Actuator producing an output
A V = S(X − Fc ).
This output is applied to an
actuator, which produces the
balancing force Fc = AV .
Fc = AV = AS(X − Fc )
Fc (1 + AS) = ASX
X = FC (1/AS + 1) = AV (1/AS + 1) = V (1/S + A)
Thus V is a linear measure of X.
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 Sensors Accelerometers

Accelerometer IC ADXL 150

The oscillator produces out of
5.4V DC phase signals which cancel
+ LNA Amp when the moving plate is
Osc Demod.
Vo exactly centred.
If the plate is displaced
-
upwards, a positive phase
0.2V signal is amplified by the Low
Block Diagram of Accelerometer Noise Amplifier LNA.
ADXL 150 It is detected by the phase
sensitive detector (Demod).
The DC output of the detector is amplified and applied back to the
centre plate.
A more positive DC bias on the centre plate reduces the electrostatic
force w.r.t. the upper plate and increases it w.r.t. the lower plate, which
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 Sensors Accelerometers

Tilt Sensing for the Drone

Our sensor board MPU 6050 contains 3 accelerometers aligned

with x, y and z axes.
3 ADCs (with 16 bit resolution) convert the DC output of each
accelerometer to digital values.
These values are placed in 3 × 2 = 6 registers which are 8-bits
wide and which can be read by Arduino through a serial interface.
We measure tilt by measuring acceleration due to gravity along
the three axes.
If the drone is upright, g is felt only by the vertical axis and
acceleration along the other two axes is zero.
If there is a tilt, the angle of tilt can be computed from the ratio of
the components of g along the three axes.

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 Sensors Measurement of Angular Velocities

Measurement of Angular Velocities

Apart from the 3 accelerometers, the MPU

module 6050 contains a 3 axis gyroscope
and a small microprocessor to handle serial
communication and data storage.
Isn’t it amazing that 3 accelerometers, a 3
axis gyroscope, 6 ADCs with 16 bit resolution
and a small micro-processor with local
memory can be bought for a mere 200 Rs.?
The gyroscope measures angular velocities around the three
axes.
Angular velocities are measured using the Coriolis force
associated with a spinning body.

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 Sensors Coriolis Force

Coriolis Force

Consider a spinning spherical body like the Earth.

An object on the spinning body will be thrown off along a tangent
at its location due to its inertia. This is the centrifugal force.
The object needs a force towards the centre of the spinning body
to keep it at its position on the surface. This force is the centripetal
force, – provided by gravitation in case of the Earth.
If the object is not static on the spinning body, but moves towards
one of the poles, there is another force which acts on the body.
This force is the Coriolis force. It is the force which makes
cyclones move clock wise in the norther hemisphere and
anti-clockwise in the southern hemisphere.

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 Sensors Coriolis Force

Coriolis Force
Consider an object moving from point P1

Axis
to point P2 on a spinning spherical body
like the Earth.
P2
When viewed from a static frame outside P1
the spinning body, the object has a
velocity from West to East, which is
maximum near the equator and zero at R

the north and south poles.

As the object moves from P1 to P2
(northwards), it would keep its initial West
to East velocity due to inertia.
However, the Earth is moving at a slower surface velocity at point
P2. Therefore the object will drift ahead of the Earth towards East.
Thus it appears to have a force acting on it, pushing it eastwards.
This is the Coriolis Force.
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 Sensors Coriolis Force

Coriolis Force
Coriolis force has been known for a long time.
An interesting aside . . .
Here is a quote from the Wikipedia:
“In 1674, Claude Francois Milliet Dechales described in
his Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus how the rotation of
the Earth should cause a deflection in the trajectories of both
falling bodies and projectiles aimed toward one of the planet’s
poles.

Riccioli, Grimaldi, and Dechales all described the effect as

part of an argument against the heliocentric system of Coper-
nicus.
In other words, they argued that the Earth’s rotation should
create the effect, and so failure to detect the effect was evi-
dence for an immobile Earth!”
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 Sensors Coriolis Force

Measurement of angular velocity using Coriolis Force

Axis
Coriolis force is proportional to the angular
velocity.
P2
It will be observed only when the object P1
moves along the axis of rotation. This
effect is used in MEMS based gyroscopes.
R
An inertial mass is made to vibrate along
the axis of rotation.
Coriolis force will try to displace the
inertial mass perpendicular to its motion.
This movement can be measured as was done for an
accelerometer, using force balance technique.

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 Sensors Gyroscope measurements

Gyroscope to measure angular velocities

The sensor board MPU 6050 contains:
1 Three accelerometers – one along each axis, with three 16 bit
ADCs to report acceleration values in digital format.
2 Three mechanical oscillators – one along each axis, which
constitute a gyroscope for angular velocity measurement. Three
additional 16 bit ADCs are used to convert the output voltages
from the gyroscope to a digital format.
3 It can accept inputs from an external 3-axis compass to provide a
complete 9-axis output to report the motion status of an object.
4 It contains more than 100 data registers, which store calibration
and status data to represent the motion state of an object.
5 The MPU 6050 module supports a serial data transfer protocol
(I2 C) which allows access to this data from an external controller
without needing too many pins.
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 Calibration

Calibration of the drone

The system frame in its static state will not be exactly
perpendicular to the gravitational force. The initial tilt value has to
be recorded and accounted for when in flight.
Similarly, the gyroscope may have some initial offset. This has to
be measured and compensated during subsequent
measurements.
Each motor has a dead range where a low value of PWM drive
produces no movement at all. Therefore a range of low PWM
values has to be excluded from the motion control algorithm. This
range needs to be programmed during initialisation and
calibration.
In the user interface, the amount of finger movement on the touch
screen of the mobile phone used to control the drone has to be
mapped to the dynamic range of useful PWM range. This will vary
from phone to phone and needs to be calibrated.
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 Motion Control

Motion Control for the Drone

Speeds of rotation of the four motors on the drone are controlled

based on:
1 User control based on the throttle, yaw, pitch and roll values set by
the user through mobile communication.
2 PID based control values required for stabilizing the drone.
These are determined through an algorithm which keeps track of
set values and actual values for each of the 6 axial parameters
(angular position and angular velocity).
3 Coefficients for proportional, integral and differential errors need
to be optimized empirically for stable operation.

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 Motion Control

PRECAUTION
The drone contains thin and sharp blades of the propellers rotating at
a very high speed.
These can cause serious harm if they colloid with people or objects.
Always use guards around the propellers and
exercise extreme care when attempting to fly your
drone!

Have fun building and flying

your drone . . .
Do learn the underlying principles for all the mechanical design,
hardware and software used for making your drone fly.
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 Part III

Appendix: Serial Interfaces

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7 Serial Data Communication

8 Synchronization

9 Synchronous Serial I-O

Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS
Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

10 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous Serial IO protocol

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 Serial Data Communication

Serial Data Communication

Serial communications means sending data a single bit at a time.
We normally deal with multi-bit data. So why not send all bits of the
data in parallel? Why bother with parallel to serial and serial to parallel
conversions?
There are several situations where serial communication is preferable.
If the transmitter and the receiver are remote, it is expensive to lay
a parallel cable with multiple wires in it.
It may be difficult to ensure that all bits on a parallel bus have the
same delay. A ‘late’ bit from one transmission might arrive at the
same time as an ‘early’ bit from the next. The transmission will
then get garbled.
If there are many units in a project which need to exchange data,
too many pins will be required to interconnect them. The only
option in this case is to exchange data using serial
communication.
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Let’s Make a Drone is/ 74
32 used in our project.
 Serial Data Communication

Serial Interfaces

How do we send the data serially?

At the transmitter, this involves loading data in parallel to a shift
register, and shifting out a bit at a time.
At the receiving end, we have another shift register, which
receives this data a single bit at a time and when all bits are
received, the shift register can be read in parallel.
From Transmitter To Receiver

Shift Register Shift Register

Serial Line

The transmitter and the receiver must agree on the order in which the
bits will be sent.
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 Synchronization

Synchronization

The rate at which the transmitter shifts the data out must be
matched to the rate at which the receiver shifts the data in.
Even if the clock frequencies at the transmitter and receiver are
perfectly matched, the phase of the clock at the receiver should be
carefully adjusted so that we sample the serial line when it is
stable and not when the data on it is changing.
How can this be ensured? This can be done through
1 synchronous communication, or
2 asynchronous communication.
In our project, we shall mostly use synchronous serial communication.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O

Synchronous communication
Synchronizing data transmission and reception can be easily managed
If the transmitter and receiver use the same clock.
The transmitter can From Transmitter To Receiver
send the data through
Data
one wire and the shift
Shift Register Shift Register
clock through another. Shift Clock
The receiver uses the clock sent by the transmitter for sampling and
shifting the data.

Shift
If the transmitter places data on the positive Clock
edge of the clock, while the receiver samples it Data sampled
by receiver
at the negative edge, the data will be stable at
the sampling instant. Data
Data placed by Transmitter

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 Synchronous Serial I-O

Synchronous communication

If the clock is sent along with data, the sampling rate as well as
timing for data change and sampling can be easily managed. This
is called synchronous serial communication.
However, this requires that the skew (differences in delay)
between the clock and data must be very small. This will be the
case if the transmitter and the receiver are located close to each
other – as in our project.
The advantage of this method is that it can achieve very high data
rates.
In this project, we shall use two popular protocols for synchronous
serial communication:
I2 C bus
Serial Peripheral Interface or SPI.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Synchronous Serial Data Transfer using I2 C Bus

The I2 C bus is a 2 wire serial interface originally developed by
Philips.
The name stands for Inter Integrated circuit bus. Writing ‘I2 C’ is
difficult in ordinary text, so it is often called the ‘I2C’ bus.
Its main application is in data communication between ICs on a
board – such as peripherals chips and processors and between
smart home appliances.
Subsequent to its introduction by Philips, Intel made some
modifications to it to ensure inter-operability between devices from
various manufacturers. That version is sometimes referred to as
System Management Bus or SMBUS.
Arduino cards include modules to support the I2 C Bus/SMBUS.
Restricted versions of this protocol are also known as the ‘2 wire
protocol’.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Synchronous Serial Data Transfer using I2 C Bus

Vdd=5V Vdd=3V Vdd=5V Vdd=3V Vdd=3.3V

Devices communicating with this
protocol are connected in parallel
Master Slave 1 Slave 2 Slave 3
across 2 wires, one of which
SDATA
carries serial data while the other
SCLK
carries the clock.

All devices drive the bus lines using open drain drivers.
Each line has a pull up resistor.
Since devices provide only the pull down function, individual
devices can use different supply voltages.
The ability to connect devices using different supply voltages and
the use of only 2 wires are the most attractive features of the I2 C
Bus.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Synchronous Serial Data Transfer using I2 C Bus

Vdd=5V Vdd=3V Vdd=5V Vdd=3V Vdd=3.3V
The bus should have a master
Master Slave 1 Slave 2 Slave 3 device, which provides the clock.
SDATA
Multiple slave devices can be
SCLK connected to the bus.

Each device has a unique address, which is normally 7 bit wide.

The number of devices which can be connected across the bus is
limited by the address space, or the maximum capacitive load of
400pF that can be placed on the bus.
The master can act as the transmitter or the receiver.
The addressed slave device then assumes a complementary role
(receiver/transmitter).
Multi master protocols are also supported.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data speed on the I2 C Bus

Because of its open drain drivers and resistive pull ups, this bus is
used for low and medium speed communication.
In the standard mode, Data is transferred at rates of up to 100
kbit/s on this bus.
The protocol does not restrict one from using much lower clock
frequencies.
Data can be sent at up to 400 kbit/s in the Fast-mode and up to 1
Mbit/s in Fast-mode Plus.
Recent versions of the bus protocol can support a speed of up to
3.4 Mbit/s in the High-speed mode.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Evolution of I2 C Bus Specifications

Year Version Max. speed Comments

1982 Original 100 kbit/s Introduced by Philips
1992 1 400 kbit/s Fast-mode and 10-bit addressing.
1998 2 3.4 Mbit/s High-speed mode added.
2007 3 1 Mbit/s Fast-mode plus with 20 mA drivers
2012 4 5 Mbit/s Unidirectional Ultra Fast-mode (UFm)
using push-pull logic
without pull-up resistors

To use the 10-bit address scheme, the address frame consists of two
bytes instead of one. A specific combination (‘11110’) of five most
significant bits of the first byte is used to signal the 10-bit address
mode. These 5 bits, the 10 bit address and the read/write bit make up
the 16 bit address frame.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Open Drain drivers

Both lines (SDA and SCL) use open drain drivers. So it is worth
recalling some characteristics of open drain logic.
Vdd
Pull Up Each driver has only a pull
Dev1 Dev2 Dev3
Bus line
SDA or SCL down transistor. Pull up is
provided by the common pull
In1 Out1 In2 Out2 In3 Out3 up resistor on the bus.
The bus can be ’High’ only if all driver transistors are OFF.
Any device can pull down the bus wire unconditionally.
Different devices using different supply voltages can be easily
connected as pull down devices.
The bus driver transistor should be able to withstand the voltage
provided by external VDD – typically 5V.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer protocol

The actual data transfer is controlled by the Master, which provides the
clock used for data transmission.
It signals the ‘Start’ of
transmission by a ‘High’ to
SCL ‘Low’ transition on the data
Data Ack
line while the clock line is high.
SDA MSB
Start Data placed sampled Similarly, the ‘Stop’ message
Stop

is signaled by a ‘Low’ to ‘High’

transition on the data line
while the clock line is high.
These are the only instances when there are transitions on the
data bus while the clock is high.
Therefore these messages are easily distinguished from data
transitions.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer protocol

For normal data transmission, the transmitter places data on the data
line at the falling edge of clock.
SCL

Therefore all data transitions are

Data Ack
SDA MSB seen after the clock goes low.
Start Data placed sampled Stop

The receiver samples data on the rising edge of the clock so that
the data is stable at the time of sampling.
In this protocol, the most significant bit is sent first.
The master device can be the talker or the listener.
Listener and talker roles are decided during the first message
from the master.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer with master as the talker

Suppose the micro-controller is the master and it wants to send data
serially to a slave device.
The master generates the ‘Start’ message on the bus. (High SCL,
‘High’ to ‘Low’ transition on SDA).
It then sends 8 bits on the serial data bus (Most significant bit first)
which include the 7 bit address of the slave device and a R/W bit
as the least significant bit.
The last bit is 0 for a write operation ( – Master being the talker in
this example).
After the transmitter has sent these 8 bits on the SDA line, the
transmitter driver transistor goes off during the ninth bit time.
The receiver pulls the data line ‘Low’ during this time to
acknowledge successful receipt of the signal. (Recall that this is
possible because of the open drain connection discussed earlier).
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer with master as the talker

When the master is the talker, it generates the start condition, then
sends the 7 bit address of the slave, followed by a ‘0’ to indicate that
the master is the talker and the slave is the listener.
During the ninth bit time, the driver transistor of the master is
turned off and the receiver should pull down the SDA line if it
received the data successfully.
This is called the ‘Ack’ message.
If the receiver driver transistor is also ‘OFF’ during the ninth bit
period, the SDA line will be seen to be ‘High’ during this time.
This is known as a ’Nack’ message. It is used by the slave to
signal failure to receive when it is a listener (during write operation
by master).

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer with master as the talker

To summarize:
The first transmission from the master establishes it as the talker
and the slave as the listener if the last bit sent from the master is
‘0’.
After the address has been acknowledged by the receiver, the
master, (which is the talker), sends data serially to the slave
receiver, checking for the ‘Ack’ signal at the end of each byte.
After all bytes have been sent, the transmission is terminated by a
‘Stop’ signal on the line.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Inter Integrated Circuit Bus: I2 C BUS

Data transfer with master as the listener

When the master wants to be the listener, it creates the start

condition, followed by a 7 bit address and then a ‘1’.
As before, during the 9th bit time, the slave should pull down the
SDA line to acknowledge that the byte has been received.
After receiving the ‘Ack’ signal, the master releases the SDA line
(turns off its open drain driver). It continues to drive SCL.
The slave now becomes the transmitter and sends data. Each
data byte is acknowledged by the master after reading it, through
an ‘Ack’ signal.
After reading the last byte, the master sends the ‘Nack’ signal to
stop the slave from transmitting any further.
The master follows up the ‘Nack’ signal with a stop condition to
terminate this round of communication.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

The Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a synchronous serial

communication interface.
The interface was developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s and is
widely used by many peripheral devices and memories.
A distinguishing feature of this interface is that there is
simultaneous transfer of data between the communicating
devices.
Thus there is no transmitter or listener – both devices send as well
as receive data.
The communicating devices are designated as master and slave.
The master device provides the shift clock and initiates data
transfers.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Master Device
Serial Clock
Clock Generator
Slave Select

Master In Master Out

D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7
MISO

MOSI
Slave Out Slave In
D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0

Slave Device Serial Clock

Slave Select

Output of the master shift register is connected to the input of the slave
shift register, while the output of the slave shift register is connected to
the input of the master shift register, thus forming a ring.
There is simultaneous transfer of data between the two devices with
clock pulses generated by the master device.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

There is no talker or listener – both devices provide outputs and
receive inputs simultaneously.
The master device generates the clock which is used by both
devices.
The master also provides Slave select lines which enable a
selected slave to take part in data transfer.
The master can have multiple
Master Device slave select lines – one for
Serial Clock
Slave Select
Clock Generator
each slave.
Master In
D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7
Master Out
Slaves are connected in
MISO

parallel to the data and clock

MOSI

Slave Out
D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0
Slave In
signals.
Slave Select
Slave Device Serial Clock Only the selected device takes
part in data transfer. Others do
not driveAcademic
their Year:
outputs.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Signals in SPI
The SPI interface defines the following signals:
MOSI: Master out, Slave in This is the output from the master and
input to the slave for serial data.
MISO: Master in, Slave out This is the output from the slave and input
to the master for serial data.
Sclk: Serial clock provided by the master. The master outputs a
counted number of clock pulses to interchange the data in
the two shift registers.
SSi : Slave select These are the slave select lines, one per slave.
Typically, the microprocessor is the master device and
multiple peripherals such as serial memory, ADC, DAC,
real time clock chips etc. are the multiple slaves.
The master has to have a separate slave select line for each slave
device. If the number of slaves is large and this many pins cannot be
provided, a decoder can be used.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Data transfer in SPI

What if we don’t want two way communication?

Data transfer in SPI is always bi-directional.
While simultaneous data transfer is an advantage in some
applications such as data streaming, simplex (one way) data
transfers are much more common.
If the master wants only to write the data to the peripheral, it
places the data it wants to write in the shift register and ignores
the data that arrives from the slave.
If the master wants only to read, it just leaves the stale data in the
shift register or loads a dummy command and carries out a
transfer. After the transfer, the received data is read. The slave is
supposed to ignore the data it received.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Clock Polarity and Phase

The master and the slave must agree on the clock polarity and phase
for data transfer. Motorola has defined four modes based on clock
polarity (CPOL) and phase (CPHA) combinations.
The clock polarity decides the resting or inactive
Leading Trailing value on the Sclk line.
Edge Edge
CPOL = 0 defines that the clock will rest at 0
CPOL=0
when idle and a clock pulse will have a leading
Rest value
Leading Trailing
edge from 0 → 1 and a trailing edge from 1 → 0.
Edge Edge
CPOL = 1 defines a clock signal which rests at 1
CPOL=1
when idle. A clock pulse consists of a 1 → 0
transition as the leading edge and a 0 → 1
transition as the trailing edge.
It is possible to convert between the two choices with a single inverter
in the Sclk line.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Clock Polarity and Phase

Clock phase decides the timing of data changes on the MOSI and
MISO lines.
CPHA=0 indicates that the MOSI and MISO lines will change data
on the trailing edge while the inside circuit captures data at (or
shortly after) the leading edge of the clock cycle.
The driver for the data lines should hold the data steady till the
next trailing edge.
For the first cycle of the clock, the first bit must already be on the
MOSI line before the leading edge of the clock arrives.
Thus, for CPHA=0, there is half a cycle with clock at idle, followed
by half a cycle with clock asserted.
CPOL=0 and CPHA=0 are the most commonly used combination for
SPI communication.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Clock Polarity and Phase

CPHA=1 indicates that the “output” side will change data on the
leading edge while the “input” side captures the data on (or shortly
after) the trailing edge of the clock cycle.
The “output” side should hold the data steady till the next leading
edge.
Thus, for CPHA=1, there is half a cycle with clock asserted,
followed by half a cycle with clock idle.
For the last cycle of the clock, drivers should hold the data steady
till slave select is de-asserted.
The four combinations of clock polarity and phase are often
summarised as a mode number, with CPOL as the more significant bit
and CPHA as the less significant bit.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

CPHA = 0 or Modes 0 and 2

Modes 0 and 2 (CPOL = 0/1, CPHA = 0)

SS

CPOL = 0
SCK
CPOL = 1
Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading
Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing
Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge
CPHA = 0

Cycle No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

MOSI

MISO

Data sampled on leading edge, changed on trailing edge.

Half an idle cycle before first leading edge.

As long as the same mode is used by all devices, the exact clock
frequency is immaterial.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

CPHA = 1 or Modes 1 and 3

Modes 1/3 CPOL = 0/1, CPHA = 1

SS

CPOL = 0
SCK
CPOL = 1
Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading

Leading
Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing

Trailing
Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge

Edge
CPHA = 1

Cycle No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

MOSI

MISO

Notice that 9 clock cycles will be required for transferring 8 bits. This is
because of the extra half clock cycle delay required to be inserted for
ensuring that data change and sampling take place at different clock
edges.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Data Size

The most common size of data that is transferred at one go is a

byte (8bits).
However, other data sizes may be used by some devices.
For example some audio codecs, such as the TSC2101 by Texas
Instruments, use 16 bit Shift registers for transferring 16 bits of
data at a time.
Arduino supports both 8 bit and 16 bit transfers.
Some other devices use twelve-bit shift registers – for example
some 12 bit digital-to-analog or analog-to-digital converters.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Daisy chaining

One problem with SPI is that it needs a separate slave select signal for
each slave. This may be a problem for many processors with a pin
constraint.
Daisy Chained Slaves
An alternative to connecting
MISO
Sclk
MOSI MOSI
Sclk
MISO
slave devices in parallel is to
Master Slave 0 daisy chain these, with a
Slave 2 Slave 1
single slave select used for all.
MISO MOSI MISO MOSI
Sclk Sclk Now we do not need multiple
slave select signals.
The master can control where the data ends up by controlling the
number of clock pulses to be supplied.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

SPI interface for Arduino cards

Most Arduino cards support data transfer using SPI interface.

Arduino uses the terms “Controller” for Master and “Peripheral” for
Slave. Thus MOSI becomes COPI while MISO becomes CIPO.
There is a library which supports SPI data transfer. This library
becomes available if you
#include <SPI.h>
at the beginning of a sketch.
Pins D11, D12 and D13 are used in Arduino UNO and Arduino
Nano for COPI (MOSI), CIPO (MISO) and SCLK respectively.
UNO allocates pin D10 for Slave-Select, though any other I/O
line(s) may be used for Slave-Select(s).
Several functions for setting parameters and for data transfer
become available when this library is used.
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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Initialising the SPI bus

SPI.begin( ); initialises the SPI bus (and the SPI class).

SPI parameters are set by a method in SPI class as:
SPI.beginTransaction(SPISettings(maxSpeed, BitOrder, Mode);
For example,
SPI.beginTransaction(SPISettings(14000000, MSBFIRST,
SPI MODE0));
SPI.endTransaction( ) is called when you want to stop using the
bus.
It is normally called after de-asserting the Slave-Select signal.
MSBFIRST Bit order and MODE0 are the most common settings
for SPI.

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 Synchronous Serial I-O Serial Peripheral Interface: SPI

Data transfer on the SPI bus

Data transfer is carried out by the “SPI.transfer” method:

receivedVal = SPI.transfer(val); for byte sized transfers and
receivedVal16 = SPI.transfer16(val16); for 16bit transfers.
Notice that SPI carries out 2 way transfers –
so “val” or “val16” is transferred out while “receivedVal” or
“receivedVal16” comes in – and is the return value from the
method.
For transfering a block of data, we may use:
SPI.transfer(buffer, size);
If SPI.transfer is called with 2 parameters, it carries out “in-place”
data transfer for data buffers.
The input values overwrite the outgoing values in buffer.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous communication

If the transmitter and the receiver are physically remote, they must
use independent shift clock generators, set nominally to the same
frequency.
In this case, their clock frequencies will invariably have a small but
non-zero mismatch.
Unfortunately, this means that with time, the sampling instant will
drift further and further away from the ideal sampling time.
When the sampling time has shifted by more than a half period,
the receiver might sample the wrong bit on the serial line, leading
to errors.
Obviously some means of re-synchronization must be provided to
avoid this and to ensure reliable transfer of data.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous communication

Synchronous communication, used for short distance data

transfer, uses an additional wire for Serial Clock.
However, for communication over relatively long distances, delay
variations between the data and clock wires can introduce
considerable skew between clock and data – which can lead to
errors.
So the same wire which carries data must also carry the extra
information required for synchronization.
This involves sending extra bits on the wire along with the data.
The data bits along with these added bits constitute a frame

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous communication

To synchronize two clocks, we need to create an edge.

Serial transmission often uses ‘non return to zero’ or NRZ
encoding to minimize noise and power dissipation.
If successive bits are identical, no edge may be generated by the
data itself.
To ensure that an edge occurs at the start of every frame, we add
a bit before and a bit after the useful data.
These bits are chosen to be different – thus ensuring that each
frame starts with a value different from the one with which the
previous one ended.
These are called start and stop bits.
It is common to use a ‘1’ for a stop bit and a ‘0’ for a start bit. Then
each frame begins with a negative edge.
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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous communication
Write instants

Each new bit is placed on the

serial line after time T.
Start 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 Stop
Serial Data This is called bit time and the
T/2
T T T T T T T T T
corresponding frequency the
baud rate.
Sampling Instants

Notice that the first sampling instant is offset from the writing
instant by half a bit time.
This is to ensure that a bit is sampled in the middle of the bit
interval T, where it is stable.
After sampling the start bit, each bit is sampled a time T after the
previous bit.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Asynchronous communication

Often a ‘Parity bit’ is also added to the data.

The transmitter and the receiver agree to use either even or odd
parity.
The parity bit is chosen by the transmitter to be a ‘0’ or a ‘1’ so that
the total number of bits in a frame is always even (or always odd).
The receiver counts the number of ‘1’s and ensures that the count
is ‘even’ (or odd) as previously agreed with the transmitter.
If it is not, it can signal an error and the software can take
appropriate action (such as a request for re-transmission).
The use of a parity bit is optional.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Frame synchronisation

The receiver knows that a frame will always begin with an edge.
It uses a locally generated clock for synchronization and timing.
The ‘start of frame’ edge on the serial data may not coincide with
an edge on the locally generated clock.
We take the next edge of the local clock as the effective start of
frame.
The error in timing due to this could be a whole cycle of the local
clock in the worst case.
Obviously, the local clock should not operate at the data rate - a
timing error of 1 bit time will then shift the data by 1 bit!
So the local clock is operated at a multiple of the shift clock.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Frame synchronisation

The locally generated clock should operate at a frequency much

higher than the bit rate.
This high frequency clock is then divided down to get the shift
clock.
For example, the locally generated clock might operate at 32 times
the shift clock. A 5 bit counter is then used to divide the local
clock.
The worst case error in timing will now be one cycle of the locally
generated (32X) clock.
Since it is running at a frequency much higher than the shift clock,
the frame synchronization error will be small.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Frame synchronisation
Frame Detect Sampling Instants
T/2 T T T T T T T T T

0
start b0 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 stop
(LSB) Time (MSB)

Synchronization occurs at the beginning of each frame.

Therefore timing errors do not accumulate from frame to frame.
However, within a frame, timing errors will increase with each
received bit of the frame because of small frequency difference
between the transmitter and receiver shift clocks.
The counter used to divide the local clock is reset to 0 when the
‘start of frame’ edge is detected.
MSB of the counter can then be used as the sampling clock.
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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Frame synchronisation Example

Take the example where we have chosen the internal clock to be 32X
bit rate, We reset the 5 bit counter when we detect the frame edge.
Now, after 16 cycles of the internal clock, corresponding to time
T/2 (where T is the interval between bits) the start bit is sampled.
If it is not ‘0’, a ‘framing error has occurred and should be handled
in software – say by a request to re-transmit.
If the start bit is correctly sampled, data bits will be sampled every
32 counts, till all data bits have been sampled.
In a typical frame, this might be 8 bits if no parity bit is appended
and 9 bits if parity bit is used.
After these bits, the next bit must be the stop bit (normally a ‘1’). If
it is not the correct value, a frame error has occurred and must be
handled appropriately.
If the stop bit is correctly received, we accept the data and wait for
the next ‘start of frame’.
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 Asynchronous Serial I-O

Frame synchronisation

Notice that this scheme will work equally well, if additional delay is
inserted between the end of one frame and the beginning of the next.
After the last bit has been sampled, no further timing needs to be
performed.
The serial line idles at the stop bit (normally ‘1’).
The counter is reset to zero whenever the next frame edge is
detected.
Therefore it does not matter how much time elapses between the
end of a frame and the beginning of the next.

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 Asynchronous Serial I-O Asynchronous Serial IO protocol

Asynchronous Serial IO protocol

Before serial communications can be carried out, the transmitter and

the receiver must agree on a number of parameters.
At what rate will the bits be sent.
How many bits will be sent at a time (frame size).
Whether parity will be used and if so, which kind of parity (even or
odd) will be used.
Whether simultaneous transmission and reception (duplex) will be
possible or only one of these will be carried out at a time (simplex).
These parameters constitute the asynchronous serial protocol.

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