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DLPNIRNANOEVM: No response over UART with Arduino

Part Number: DLPNIRNANOEVM
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TXS0108E

I have been trying to connect the DLP NIRscan Nano EVM ("sensor" from now on) to an Arduino Mega over pins 3 (UART4 receive) and 4 (UART4 transmit) of the J3 connector as explained in the sensor's datasheet. Since the Arduino operates at 5v and the sensor at 3.3v, I used the ZHITING TXS0108E bidirectional logic level converter to prevent damage. The logic level converter I chose supports UART, and I could verify this myself by having the Arduino communicate over UART with a Raspberry 3B+ (also 3.3v) with the same exact circuit, so I am pretty sure that's not the issue.

The full circuit is visible in the images below:

  • the Arduino hardware serial port 1 is used, just like in the code below (but I also tried other ports just in case).
  • the Arduino ground and the sensor ground are connected together.
  • the logic level converter is enabled since OE is connected to Arduino's 5v (with a pull-down resistor to ground); connecting it to the sensor's 3.3v does not make a difference.
  • the sensor RX passes through the logic level converter and at the end connects to the Arduino TX, and viceversa; just in case I tried swapping the cables to no avail.

This is the bare-minimum code I uploaded to the Arduino (I already tried multiple variations, none of which working). As already said, it works well if I connect a Raspberry instead of the sensor. The code tries to send a "read scan time command" according to the tables in the documentation. I never got any response from the sensor, not even an error packet: reading from the serial port always returns -1 as if no data is available.

void setup() {
  // open serial port in 8N1 mode: 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit
  // also: 115200 bits per second, no flow control, 1ms of timeout
  Serial1.begin(115200, SERIAL_8N1);
  Serial1.setTimeout(1); // I also tried removing this to no avail
  delay(500);

  uint8_t values[] = {
    // A   B   C   D
       65, 66, 67, 68,
    // checksum
       62, 0, 0, 0,
    // flags 00000011: reply requested and read mode
       3,
    // first and only packet of sequence
       0,
    // packet length: 2 bytes for command byte and group byte
       2, 0,
    // command byte 0x37, group byte 0x02 (NNO_CMD_READ_SCAN_TIME)
       55, 2,
    // D   C   B   A
       68, 67, 66, 65
  };
  for (uint8_t v : values) {
    Serial1.write(v);
  }
}

void loop() {
  uint8_t received = Serial1.read();
  // here received is always equal to -1 no matter how much I wait
}

The sensor works normally when using the DLP NIRscan Nano GUI. Using that same tool I updated the sensor's firmware and spectrum library to the latest versions downloaded from here, but my circuit did not work neither before nor after the update.

I found a possibly similar thread here: if you think my post is a duplicate feel free to tell me and I'll post all of my information on that other thread.