SPI Bus

SPI is a very common high-speed protocol for a lot of devices. The ESPHome SPI component implements only the host controller role, where it controls the bus, and writes or reads data from peripherals attached to the bus.

The SPI bus usually consists of 4 wires:

  • CLK: Is used to tell the receiving device when to read data. All devices on the bus can share this line. Sometimes also called SCK.

  • CS (chip select): Is used to tell the receiving device when it should listen for data. Each device has an individual CS line. Sometimes also called SS. If the SPI bus has a single device, its CS pin can sometimes be connected to ground to tell it that it is always selected.

  • MOSI (aka SDO - Serial Data Out): Is used to send data from the controller (the ESP) to the peripheral device. All devices on the bus share this line.

  • MISO (also SDI - Serial Data In): Is used to receive data. All devices on the bus share this line.

In some cases one of MOSI or MISO do not exist as the receiving device only accepts data or sends data. It is also possible to configure a quad SPI interface using 4 output data lines. This is required only for use with certain components.

To set up SPI devices in ESPHome, you first need to place a top-level SPI component which defines the pins to use for the functions described above. The CS pins are individually managed by the other components that reference the spi component. This component also accepts a list of controllers if you want to implement multiple SPI buses.

# Example configuration entry - single controller
spi:
  clk_pin: GPIO14
  mosi_pin: GPIO13
  miso_pin: GPIO12

# Example configuration entry - three controllers, one using quad SPI
spi:
  - id: spi_bus0
    clk_pin: GPIO18
    mosi_pin: GPIO23
    miso_pin: GPIO19
    interface: hardware
  - id: spi_bus1
    clk_pin: GPIO14
    mosi_pin: GPIO27
    miso_pin: GPIO26
    interface: any
  - id: quad_spi_bus
    clk_pin: GPIO47
    data_pins:
      - 40
      - 41
      - 42
      - 43

Configuration variables:

  • clk_pin (Required, Pin Schema): The pin used for the clock line of the SPI bus.

  • mosi_pin (Optional, Pin Schema): The pin used for the MOSI line of the SPI bus.

  • miso_pin (Optional, Pin Schema): The pin used for the MISO line of the SPI bus.

  • id (Optional, ID): Manually specify the ID for this SPI hub if you need multiple SPI hubs.

  • interface (Optional): Controls which hardware or software SPI implementation should be used. Value may be one of any (default), software, hardware, spi, spi2 or spi3, depending on the particular chip. See discussion below.

  • data_pins (Optional, Pin Schema): Must be a list of exactly 4 pins to be used for the quad SPI output data lines.

At least one of mosi_pin, miso_pin and data_pins must be specified.

Interface selection:

ESP32 and ESP8266 chips have several hardware SPI controller implementations - usually the first one or two are reserved for use to access the flash and PSRAM memories, leaving one or two user-accessible controllers. SPI controller instances configured in ESPHome can be assigned to one of these with the interface: configuration option.

By default (interface: any) the first available hardware controller will be assigned, a second if available then any further instances configured will use software mode. You can choose a specific controller with spi (meaning the first or only available controller) or one of spi2 and spi3 for ESP32 chips with two available SPI controllers. Note that SPI0 and SPI1 are typically not available, being reserved for accessing flash and PSRAM.

If the software option is chosen, or you configure more SPI instances than there are available hardware controllers, the remaining instances will use a software implementation, which is unable to achieve data rates above a few hundred kHz. This is acceptable for sensors or other devices not transferring large amounts of data, but will be too slow to drive a display for example.

While the ESP32 supports the reassignment of the default SPI pins to most other GPIO pins, using the dedicated SPI pins can improve performance and stability for certain ESP/device combinations. ESP8266 has a more limited selection of pins that can be used; check the datasheet for more information.

Generic SPI device component:

Other components that depend on the SPI component will reference it, typically to communicate with specific peripheral devices. There is also a general-purpose SPI device component that can be used to communicate with hardware not supported by a specific component. It allows selection of the SPI mode, data_rate, CS pin and bit order. Reads and writes on the device can be performed with lambdas. For example:

 spi:
     clk_pin: GPIO14
     mosi_pin: GPIO27
     miso_pin: GPIO26
     interface: hardware

 spi_device:
     id: spidev
     cs_pin: GPIO13
     data_rate: 2MHz
     mode: 3
     bit_order: lsb_first

on...:
  then:
    - lambda: !lambda |-
        id(spidev).enable();
        id(spidev).write_byte(0x4F);
        id(spidev).disable();

Configuration variables:

  • data_rate (Optional): Set the data rate of the controller. One of 80MHz, 40MHz, 20MHz, 10MHz, 5MHz, 4MHz, 2MHz, 1MHz (default), 200kHz, 75kHz or 1kHz. A numeric value in Hz can alternatively be specified.

  • mode (Optional): Set the controller mode - one of mode0, mode1, mode2, mode3. The default is mode3. See table below for more information

  • bit_order (Optional): Set the bit order - choose one of msb_first (default) or lsb_first.

  • cs_pin (Optional, Pin Schema): The CS pin.

SPI modes:

SPI devices operate in one of four modes as per the table below. The choice of mode is dictated by the requirements of the speficic peripheral chip.

Supported Modes

Mode

Clock Idle Polarity

Clock Phase

Data shifted on

Data sampled on

0

low

leading

/CS activation and falling CLK

rising CLK

1

low

trailing

rising CLK

falling CLK

2

high

leading

/CS activation and rising CLK

falling CLK

3

high

trailing

falling CLK

rising CLK

See Also