I noticed that the rfid receiver does not support the RPi 3B+, are there any plans to make it compatible for the B+ or the new RPi 4?
The 3B+ had power issues that we could not resolve with the existing design, I am not sure but I would hope these issues were resolved in RPi 4. We have not yet tested with RPi 4 though. Our design is technically correct.
If there are no power issues with the RPi 4, would the rfid board work with it?
If the power issues were resolved in RPi 4, then it should work fine. The incompatibility is related to power on Pi 3B+, a known issue if you google this topic. Again, I am unaware if this has been resolved, so check into potential power issues on RPi 4 before purchase.
If I use a RPi 3, do you think there would be any issues running it with the rfid kit and a LCD touchscreen. I believe they would both use the GPIO pin header. My ideal setup is a RPi with a PoE hat, NCD rfid kit, and a LCD touchscreen. Does that seem reasonable?
Our RFID board uses the USART for serial communications. If there are no conflicts with other hardware also trying to use the USART port, then you will have no issues. If you use the I2C port, this typically can be shared with other hats without issue due to the nature of I2C communications. The USART does not work in the same way, and cannot be shared among devices.
I just looked it up and the touchscreen using i2c, so it seems that my setup should be possible. Thanks Ryan
No problem, let me know how it works out…
On Pi3B+, the UART is a software serial. You have to change the config.ini to force the CPU to run full speed all the time. The disadvantage of CPU frequency changes is that it also changes the speed of software Serial UARTs.
The Pi4 have hardware uart. So no problem should be noticed there.