The SPI interface has become as ubiquitous in embedded design as the UART or ADC. This is for good reasons as the SPI protocol has a number of great advantages. It is these advantages that we will talk about today and how to best utilize them in your design. Advanced uses of the SPI interface If you are just getting started with the SPI interface, Sparkfun put together a nice intro on SPI or even check out the Wikipedia article on it. Below I have gathered a list of advanced uses of the SPI interface hardware that could either improve SPI communications between your devices or use the hardware in an unusual way – often to provide means to a different protocol not supported by the hardware. Single direction allows for isolation or level shifting In one of my recent designs, I’ve been using a micro that is limited to 2.8v to 3.3v power source but found an extremely low-power, and low-cost sensor that could only run at 1.8v. Because of the single direction of each of …