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Currently using i2C to connect a RPi with an arduino. It seems i2C is quite finicky and, drops the bus immediately if there are any IO errors. Since what i am building is meant to be semi permanent, I am worried that i2C may not be the best choice.

Has anyone done any real world testing of i2C vs GPIO for RPi to arduino communication?

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    GPIO is too generic to compare to without being more specific; for example, you can (with some difficulty) implement I2C using GPIOs. I2C reliability/recovery problems are likely more about drivers than peripheral blocks themselves.
    – Chris Stratton
    Jul 22 '14 at 20:48
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Here are a few things to remember:

  • You should have a ground connection between the RPi and Arduino
  • I2C was meant for really short distances on a printed circuit board
  • Arduino runs at 5 Volt logic levels and RPi at 3.3 Volt logic levels - you need a level translator between them to make that work.

If the RPi and the Arduino are not far apart, I would say less than 1 foot (30 cm) and you have the grounds connected between the boards, then it is a software issue. I2C is meant for short distances any anything longer than a foot puts too much capaitance on the wires and starts causing unreliable communication. I would not even use it for more than a few inches unless it was on a circuit board where you control the capacitance.

I am assuming your using the Wire library on the Arduino side. On the RPi side I would use the the Adafruit I2C library for the RPi as I have had success using the library to communicate with I2C sensors listed on their site. Here is the link:

Adafruit RPi I2C Tutorial

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  • Not sure there is such a thing as the 'Adafruit' i2c library. The instructions on the adafruit site are quite good, but really no different than those on half a dozen other blogs. Also I believe you are incorrect about needing a level translator if connecting just one device.
    – Bachalo
    Jul 24 '14 at 1:52
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    Sorry, I2C is not the library, I was thinking the smbus Python library they tell you to apt-get. That is what I installed for my RPi. As for the level translator - you should not put 5 Volt signals to the RPi pins as it will burn them out. It might take a little while, though in my experience I burn out a few GPIO with 5 Volt signals as soon as I turned power on. Take a look at this from the Raspberry Pi website: raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/gpio/…
    – tiger19tony72
    Jul 24 '14 at 2:03
  • @tiger19tony72 is right. If its 5V, use 5V, if 3.3V use 3.3V. Specifications exsit for a reason :)
    – Martynas
    Oct 22 '14 at 6:21

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