SPI clock is not switching on RPi

Question

I need to use SPI for a project I'm working on with a Raspberry PI, but the little bit of test code I wrote doesn't seem to work.

#test program for spi

import spidev
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
from time import sleep

bus = 0                     #always 0, apparently
device = 0                  #we will use our own CS pin

mode = 3                    #see SPI modes
maxSpeed = 100000           #maximum clock speed in Hz
noCs = True                 #hardware CS
lsbFirst = False            #MSB first is default

##############################################################
CS_PIN = 24                 #CS pin number
WRITE_DATA = [0x4D, 0x4D, 0x4D]
##############################################################


if __name__ == '__main__':
    #config GPIO
    GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
    GPIO.setup(CS_PIN, GPIO.OUT)
    GPIO.setwarnings(False)
    
    GPIO.output(CS_PIN, True)
    
    #config SPI
    spi = spidev.SpiDev()
    spi.open(bus, device)
    spi.mode = mode
    spi.no_cs = noCs
    spi.lsbfirst = lsbFirst
    spi.max_speed_hz = maxSpeed

    #run SPI
    GPIO.output(CS_PIN, False)
    spi.xfer(WRITE_DATA)
    GPIO.output(CS_PIN, True)
    sleep(0.1)
    #print data
    '''
    listLen = len(readbytes)
    print("Lenght: ", listLen)

    i = 0
    while i < listLen:
        print("Byte ", i, ": ", readbytes[i])
        i += 1
    '''
    GPIO.cleanup()

I'm using an external CS because I need to connect multiple devices to this SPI bus. I probed the SPI signals with an oscilloscope. I see the CS go low and then high, but there is no switching activity on SCK, MOSI, or MISO, they just stay high.

I am using the Adafruit T-Cobbler Plus for RPi, and I am probing the correct pins (they shouldn't be high if they weren't the correct pins.

Can anyone help me with this?

Answer 1

The python code you listed will run then immediately stop and restore GPIO to initial state.

Answer 2

You need to enable SPI before you can use it. You can enable SPI using the raspi-config utility (sudo raspi-config from the command line). You may also need to add some configuration steps in /boot/config.txt depending on exactly what you want to do.