Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

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tommy1011
 
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Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by tommy1011 »

I am trying to set up a point-to-point radio link using 2 Adafruit RFM95 Lora Radio boards. One end of the RFM95 link is driven by a Raspberry Pi Model 4B. The other end is driven by a Raspberry Pico W.

The Raspberry Pico end generates an error on start up: RuntimeError: Failed to find rfm9x with expected version -- check wiring.

I checked the wiring and the connections carefully. In fact, I swapped the Raspberry Pi and the Rasperry Pico so that the Pi would use the RFM95 and the associated wiring that was originally connected to the Pico, and vice-versa. The Pico still generated the same error using the other RFM95, and also the Pi started up correctly using the "problem" RFM95. So, I doubt that this is an issue with the physical wiring.

I then assumed that maybe I was not configuring the SPI bus correctly. However, at this point I am using the SPI instructions and code that Adafruit recommends on one of their web pages: https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-star ... on/pinouts

I tried using other available SPI ports on the Pico, but this still gives the same result.
At this point, I'm pretty much out of ideas as to the source of the problem. Any help that you could provide would be much appreciated.
I have included a screenshot of the first few instructions in my program as well as the associated error message.
simpletest4.png
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barshatriplee
 
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Re: Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by barshatriplee »

First I would suggest you to check the continuities of your jumper wires. Maybe your connection is correct but jumper wires are bad.

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tommy1011
 
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Re: Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by tommy1011 »

Thanks for your reply to my post. I re-did the wiring between the RFM95 and the Pico. This time I even soldered all the wires in place and I verified with my ohmmeter that the connections are good. This did not resolve the problem. I still get the same "check wiring" error message.

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adafruit_support_carter
 
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Re: Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Please post a photo of your setup showing how everything is connected.

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tommy1011
 
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Re: Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by tommy1011 »

Thank you for taking the time to look at my question.

I have included photos of 2 setups using 2 different Pico W boards. The result is the same in both cases. The "check wiring" message appears.

I am convinced that this is not a wiring issue, but rather a firmware issue, for the following reasons:

I originally used Micropython on the Pico. I also installed the Blinka and Platform Detect libraries as shown on the Adafruit page: https://learn.adafruit.com/circuitpytho ... -libraries . Then I added adafruit_rrm9x.py from the CircuitPython bundle.

Using this firmware, I get the "check wiring" error message using either one of my setups in my attached photos every time that I try to communicate with the rfm95 board.

Yesterday I tried replacing the Micropython firmware on the Pico W with the Circuitpython firmware as shown on: https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-star ... cuitpython . Using this native Circuitpython firmware the "check wiring" error message no longer occurs, and I am able to successfully send and receive data over the rfm95 radio channel.

This resolves the rfm95 issue, but now leaves me with a new problem. As part of my project requirements, I have also set up a Wifi communication link from the Pico W to a remote server. In order to communicate with the remote server, I set up a socket connection as a client to the remote server. This is easy to do using the socket module available in the Micropython firmware.

However, the socket module has been replaced in the CircuitPython firmware by the socketPool module. The coding required to set up a client socket is not quite the same as with the Micropython socket. I have not been successful in setting up the socket in CircuitPython and I have been unable to find any example snippets of code that show exactly how to do the client socket setup. I think that I will need to raise this as another question in this forum.
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adafruit_support_carter
 
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Re: Adafruit RFM95 LoRa Radio "check wiring" error with Raspberry Pico W

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

Sounds like the issue is specific to the micropython/Blinka combo. In that case, could open a new issue here:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Blinka/issues

For the socket question, agree - starting a new forum post is probably best, to keep the two different discussions separate.

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