Lecture 25 : I/O Port Expansion using Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)

Though SPI is a serial communication interface, it can be used to realize multiple output parallel ports and multiple input parallel ports. We will consider this realization of an output parallel port and an input port separately. Parallel Output Port Realization A parallel 8-bit output port can be realized through SPI with the help of a shift register chip (74HC595) as shown in Fig 25.1. RC5/SD0 pin outputs serial data while RC3/SCK oin outputs the serial clock. Since input data transfer is not required, port pin RC4/SDI is used to latch the shift register data to the output pins of the shift register. Hence RC4 is configured as an output pin. Fig 25.1  PIC connection (in SPI mode)  with a shift register When an 8-bit data is written to SSPBUF, the data is shifted out of RC5/SD0 pin. With CKP = 1, the data is stable at the positive transition but changes at the negative transition. The shift shifts the data at the positive clock transition. After 8 clock pulses, all 8-bits are shifted in the shift register. The completion of data transfer is indicated by SSPIF interrupt flag becoming ' 1' . The interrupt service routine make RC4 ' 1' , thus latching the 8-bit data to the output of the shift register. The configuration of various registers are shown in Fig 25.2 Port configurations Fig 25.2 Various Register Configurations Parallel Input Port Realization A shift register (74HC165) is connected to the PIC microcontroller as shown in Fig 25.3. Pin RD7 is configured as an output and is used to load 8-bit data to the shift register. A dummy write to SSPBUF initiates data transfer. Data bit is read into RC4/SDI at the negative clock transition (CKP = 0) where the data bit is stable. Data is shifted in the shift register at the position clock transition as shown in the timing diagram. After the completion of data transfer, SSPIF interrupt flag goes high. Therafter the 8-bit data can be read by reading SSPBUF. Fig 25.3  Realization of an 8-bit parallel input port with PIC in SPI mode. Port configurations Fig 25.4 gives the configurations various registers for inputs parallel port realization. Fig 25.4 Configurations of various registers for parallel input port