Are there serial pins on the expansion dock?

[Pavils Jurjans]

Hmm, are you sure your pin layout diagram is correct? In despair, I connected the top right 5th pin (TX in diagram) to the Arduino Micro TX pin (3rd from the nearest corner), and the RX-RX respectively, and got the comms working!

Shouldn't then the 5th pin in the diagram be RX and 6th pin TX?

[Lazar Demin]

@Pavils-Jurjans that seems odd, since the Omega uses these pins when connected to the Expansion Dock or Mini Dock to communicate with the USB to Serial chip to provide the serial terminal.

Can you send a photo of the working setup?

[Pavils Jurjans]

Here's a lousy photo:

The TX wire connects the Arduino's 3rd leftside pin to the Omega's 5th pin (counting from the right side);
The RX wire connects the Arduino's 4th leftside pin to the Omega's 6th pin (counting from the right side);

The wire labels are linked to the Omega's diagram. The "problem" is, though, that the Arduino's 3rd pin is TX, and 4th is RX.

[Kit Bishop]

@Pavils-Jurjans I don't know a lot about the TX/RX pins, but one thing that strikes me from your photos is that I don't see any common ground connection between the Omega and the Arduino - it may be off shot, but will definitely be needed

[Pavils Jurjans]

Of course, the ground must be common for all the connected devices (the power source, RGB LED strip are off shot). They wouldn't work, if the ground would not be connected, and there's a good chance to fry stuff that way.

[Rubén Vizcaya]

Hi,

It's amazing the power of comunicating arduino and omega, but I have a situation I don't understand. Probably I'm missing something

I've connected my arduino with omega this way:

ard tx -> omg tx
ard rx -> omg rx
ard vin -> omg 5v
ard gnd -> omg gnd

Then I ssh omega and "screen /dev/ttyATH0 115200" (I configured arduino serial to 115200 to).

Then everything works fine. I receive some data from my dht11 connected to arduino.

So I had the idea of cutting a USB cable and wiring omega usb to arduino this way:

omg usb 5v -> ard 5v
omg usb gnd -> ard gnd
omg usb d+ -> ard tx
omg usb d- -> ard rx

I've tried "usb d+ -> ard rx" and "usb d- -> ard tx" too.

And when I "screen /dev ttyATH0 115200" on my omega I get nothing.

So my question is: Should I receive something? Am I doing something wrong? Any Idea?

[Lazar Demin]

Hi @Rubén-Vizcaya
Cutting the USB cable and connecting the USB data lines to the Arduino serial pins will not work since the USB data lines will be communicating in the USB protocol and the Arduino will be expecting a simple serial protocol.

The Expansion Dock (and Mini Dock) have a USB-to-Serial chip between the microUSB port and the Omega that converts the protocols.

[Rubén Vizcaya]

@Lazar-Demin Thanks for the info... I was suspecting something like that

[Kevin Sidwar]

@Lazar-Demin For anyone that comes along this post later I just want to clarify that the TX and RX for the serial diagram are wrong here. They are correct on the official pinout page.

[Lazar Demin]

Thanks @Kevin-Sidwar
Yep, we've updated the Pinout diagram to fix where the Serial RX and TX pins are found.
I've gone back and updated my post above.