GetingStarted not stable with ethernet shield ?

[bzaharie]

I am running the gettingStarted samples with "+" radios from sparkfun, on Arduino Uno. I use pins 7 and 8 in ordr not to interfere with 10 and 4 which are used for the shield. With only the board everything looks ok. When on one board I stack over the ethernet shield communication has problems:

• sometimes in the status it detects the radio as non plus variant and the power is _LOW
• the "receiving" gets into an endless loop and allways receives something even if transmitter is not in transmit mode
• it is not a problem of the radios, as I have two, I switched them and only hapens when I have the ethernet shield connected
  • am not using the ethernet shield yet, it is only connected on the board, no initialisation, nothing

[bzaharie]

Clearly is related to SD card on the ethernet shield - happens only when SD card is inserted

[maniacbug]

From the symptoms it sound like the Arduino has lost the ability to communicate with the RF module. You could set something up so that you can do a "printDetails()" call when the problems start, and then you can see if the configuration looks right. My first instinct is that it's a power problem. Perhaps the regulator cannot supply enough power to the module with the ENC chip and the RF and the SD card.

[bzaharie]

It's clear messed up - when printing the configuration all parameters seem to be wrong. The point is that works ok in exactly the same hw setup with the Mirf library, so if it is a matter of power then comes from setting in software (I just checked the SETUP register, maybe is related to transmit power, but I get the same value)

[etemu]

You should pull the CSN of your SD card high, and declare it as an output pin of course. It's a frequent error when a SD card is inserted in the network shield, but the SD card is not used: MISO/MOSI lines are not floating at the SD card due to the undefined operating state.