SPI communication with the MCP3008 in C

Question

I am using SPI communication with between a Model B+ and an external ADC of 10 bit resolution, the MCP3008. I have wired it with accordance to the data sheet. I am also using the bcm2835 library and using Geany as an IDE. Referring to this image, There should be a '1' sent, then '0x80' which would correspond to a single ended input on channel 0 according to the previous image along with this. The return byte has the two most significant bits at the end. Then a dummy byte is sent with the rest of the output on the return byte. My code is as follows:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <bcm2835.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{

  if (!bcm2835_init()){
    return 1;
  }
  bcm2835_spi_begin();
  bcm2835_spi_setBitOrder(BCM2835_SPI_BIT_ORDER_MSBFIRST);      
  bcm2835_spi_setDataMode(BCM2835_SPI_MODE0); //Data comes in on falling edge                
  bcm2835_spi_setClockDivider(BCM2835_SPI_CLOCK_DIVIDER_256); //250MHz / 256 = 976.5kHz 
  bcm2835_spi_chipSelect(BCM2835_SPI_CS0); //Slave Select on CS0                    
  bcm2835_spi_setChipSelectPolarity(BCM2835_SPI_CS0, LOW);   

  uint8_t send_data = 0x01;
  uint8_t dumData = bcm2835_spi_transfer(send_data);

  send_data = 0x80;
  uint8_t msb = bcm2835_spi_transfer(send_data);
  int msbRead = msb & 0b00000011

  send_data = 0;    
  uint8_t lsb = bcm2835_spi_transfer(send_data);

  int adcRead = (msbRead << 8) | lsb;

  printf("%d\n", adcRead);
  printf("%d\n", msb);
  printf("%d\n", msbRead);
  printf("%d\n", lsb);
  printf("%d\n", dumbData);

  bcm2835_spi_end();
  bcm2835_close();
  return 0;

}

When putting Channel 0 at VCC, the output is:

511 for adcRead

129 for msb (includes dummy bits)

1 for msbRead (the corrected value after ignoring dummy bits)

255 for lsb

1 for dumbData (If its diagnostically relevant)

The data isn't correct, and even when put at other voltages, the reading isn't correct, only when at GND will it read 0.

Answer 1

You need to transfer all three bytes in one SPI transaction, i.e. assert slave select, transfer 3 bytes, deassert slave select.

The above code is doing three separate transactions which will be ignored by the ADC.

Instead of the three bcm2835_spi_transfer calls change the code to make a single call to bcm2835_spi_transfernb.