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I have this strange problem... When I connect TX and RX pins together (GPIO 14 and GPIO 15, Rev1) and I run minicom, I see everything that I type... so it works.

But when I connect TX RX with an USB FTDI cable to my laptop and run minicom too, I can only receive what it is typed on RPi but not the other way around.

I have connected both Grounds because otherwise it doesnt work at all.

Have I fried my Pi? I was messing with a project which involves 12Volts... I hope didn't damaged it...

Marcel
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kapcom01
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  • Have you enabled 'local echo' in minicom? It's ctrl-a then e. I wouldn't worry about the 12V on the UART as RS232 signals are 12V anyway. – Kenneth Jun 25 '13 at 18:22
  • local echo works – kapcom01 Jun 25 '13 at 19:57
  • Sorry if this is obvious but have you remembered to disable diagnostic output on the UART? – Kenneth Jun 25 '13 at 21:00
  • yes I had. It turned out to be a minicom problem on the laptop side... I used GtkTerm and I can send and receive now... thanks for your time! – kapcom01 Jun 26 '13 at 00:05
  • No problem. If you could just create an answer with a description of what you did to solve your problem and mark it as the correct answer you will be helping out others who may have had the same problem. – Kenneth Jun 26 '13 at 06:33

4 Answers4

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May be someone is still facing the same problem.

I was using the Serial to USB converter which works at TTL level. Was trying to interface it with TI microcontroller and faced the same problem. I could receive data but couldn't send from PC to the device. The problem was TTL and RS232 levels mismatch.

Device used RS232 levels only.

Regards, Adil

Adil
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The GPIO pins are at 3.3V logic level (0 and ~3.3V). You are likely trying to interface to a standard RS-232 device which would require RS-232 voltage levels (positive 3-15V and negative 3-15V).

There are logic level converters out there, but a cheaper solution would be to roll your own with a MAX3232 (3.3V complant MAX232) chip and a small handful of capacitors if you have the skills to put it together.

Tevo D
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  • BTW I use a clone of this https://www.adafruit.com/products/284#Description – kapcom01 Jun 25 '13 at 20:00
  • Sorry.... I used GtkTerm and it works... I dont know whats wrong with minicom... I noticed that when I exited minicom it stucked and when I CTRL-Z suddenly everything I typed appeared on RPi's minicom.. – kapcom01 Jun 26 '13 at 00:03
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Using GtkTerm on my laptop instead of minicom solved the problem.

kapcom01
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Try with WiringPi. It worked fine for me. Just install WiringPi and run the SerialTest.c in it. You will be able to get a sequence of values from 0 till 255. Short pin 8 and 10 in RPi and you will be able to see what you send.

Gerben
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BEING_CODER
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