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I am trying to connect a Raspberry Pi to a OSDP card reader. The reader communicates via RS485, and is powered by 9-27V DC.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to succeed with a serial connection in any way. I have disabled serial debugging in Raspbian.

Seeing as I get no feedback from the software, I am looking to exclude the hardware as the issue. Can anyone see any flaws in the below solution? (I apologize for the child-like schematic)

If you can think if a better solution or think of any common pitfalls or ways to debug this, I'm all ears.

Schematic

I power the system with a 12V DC power supply, and use a lm2596s buck converter to supply 5V to the Raspberry. I use a RS485 shield from AB Electronics to convert UART to RS485.

EDIT

I tried what Andrew Malcolm suggested, and connected the UART pins for debugging. I do indeed receive an answer back, and it stops when disconnecting the pins. I conclude that the serial is setup correctly from this.

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If you completely remove the shield, and connect pin 8 to pin 10 on the Pi, can you get characters echoed back? How are you writing to the port? Through /dev/ttyX ? Which terminal emulator? Minicom? Make sure it is not in local echo mode and that whatever you type comes back. Then disconnect the link from 8 to 10 and confirm the echo stops. Until you can pass that test, there's no point messing with extra hardware, you need to get the Pi configured for serial I/O. Hope this helps. If you more assistance, post back here. Good luck!

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  • That is a very good idea. I've tried with Windows 10 IoT Core and from Rasbian with python3 on /dev/ttyAMA0. I will definitely try this. Had no idea I could look it back, thanks! – Troels Larsen Nov 3 '18 at 12:30
  • I tried your suggestion today, and it appears that the rpi is configured correctly. But I don't receive exactly what I send, which concerns me. I've updated my answer. – Troels Larsen Nov 3 '18 at 21:08
  • Scratch that. It was a mistake on my part. The read values match the sent ones. – Troels Larsen Nov 3 '18 at 21:24
  • Ok, so I got everything working now. I have absolutely no idea why though. I disconnected the A/B wires leading to the reader, and tried to reverse them. When that didn't work, I put them back. And now it works. There must have been a short or a loose connection somewhere. – Troels Larsen Nov 3 '18 at 21:55
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I tested on my Pi:

This is what I had to do

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

REMOVE "console=serial0,115200" and/or "console=ttyAMA0,115200"

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

ADD: dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt

REBOOT

RUN sudo minicom --setup

set port to /dev/ttyAMA0

characters typed are echoed to the screen until the loopback jumper is removed

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