Rfid reader and SD card shield won't work together

Question

I recently encountered a problem that's been bugging me for days. I want to make a project using a RFID reader and log data on an SD card with an Arduino Nano, but apparently no matter what I do, I can't seem to make them work together on SPI. They both work individually, and the SD shield works in parallel with the RFID reader, but the RFID doesn't work in parallel with the SD shield.

I'm absolutely sure that the wiring is correct, slave select on both modules are wired to different digital pins, and both are connected through bidirectional level shifters.

I noticed that the RFID reader works fine when I disconnect the MISO pin from the SD shield. I tried putting a diode between SD MISO and digital pin 12, I tried adding pullup resistors on both SS pins, I tried adding resistors on MISO lines, I tried pulling HIGH the SS i don't use, and low the one I want active. Nothing seemes to work and I'm out of ideas. The last thing I will try is conencting the modules on separate VCC, but I don't have faith that it will make any difference.

I hope someone has some advice for my problem.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

SD cards (or really their breakout boards) don't tend to obey the rules with regards to SPI. In particular the MISO pin isn't set to high impedance when the slave select is not selected.

You can fix this with a tri-state buffer that you feed the SD card's miso line to and controlled by the slave select. The output from the buffer goes to the arduino's MISO.

Answer 2

The only way I could get it to work was to buy a separate SD logger shield (which contains an SD card via SPI).

When I used the SRAM (SPI) together with the SD card (SPI) it never did work. At least not on an Arduino (Uno or Mega).