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I am working with the MCP4131 Digital Potentiometer and I am running into some trouble. The MISO and MOSI functionalities are multiplexed onto the same pin. Obviously, this means that I have to have Pin 13 and 12 hooked into the same pin on the chip.

I want to read send a READ command to the chip so that I can get the current value of the POT; however, when I send the lower byte in order to retrieve the value, I simply am getting back whatever I send because pins 13 and 12 are hooked into the same spot.

Is there any examples on how to work with a module such as the MCP4131 where the MISO and MOSI are on the same pin? Thank you!

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  • I’d not use the SPI bus for this but use the (bitbanged) Arduino function shiftOut and shiftIn.
    – Gerben
    Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 11:59

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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You need to do a little conversion:

  • Connect the SDI/SDO line to MISO on the Arduino.
  • Connect a 1kΩ resistor between MISO and MOSI on the Arduino.

Then you first send the command byte(s) to the slave. You will receive these back, but you can just ignore them.

Then you receive the data. You do this by sending 0xFF for each byte. The 1kΩ resistor means the slave can override the 0xFF from the MOSI. The MOSI -> MISO resistor effectively becomes a pullup resistor and is, to all intents and purposes, ignored (it's just in parallel to the pullup resistor internal to the slave).

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  • Awesome I will give this a try later!
    – Derek D
    Commented Apr 7, 2018 at 14:56
  • The solution worked, while digging through the datasheet I found this page SPI Examples . I followed this and it worked perfectly!
    – Derek D
    Commented Apr 10, 2018 at 15:19

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