SLVA704 June   2015 INA209 , INA219 , INA220 , INA220-Q1 , INA223 , INA226 , INA226-Q1 , INA228 , INA228-Q1 , INA230 , INA231 , INA233 , INA234 , INA237 , INA237-Q1 , INA238 , INA238-Q1 , INA3221 , INA3221-Q1 , LM8323 , LM8325-1 , LM8327 , LM8328 , LM8330 , LM8333 , LM8335 , OPT3001 , OPT3004 , P82B715 , P82B96 , PCA6107 , PCA9306 , PCA9306-Q1 , PCA9515A , PCA9515B , PCA9518 , PCA9534 , PCA9534A , PCA9535 , PCA9536 , PCA9538 , PCA9539 , PCA9543A , PCA9544A , PCA9545A , PCA9546A , PCA9548A , PCA9554 , PCA9554A , PCA9555 , PCA9557 , PCF8574 , PCF8574A , PCF8575 , PCF8575C , TCA4311A , TCA5405 , TCA6408A , TCA6416A , TCA6418E , TCA6424A , TCA6507 , TCA8418 , TCA8418E , TCA8424 , TCA9406 , TCA9509 , TCA9517 , TCA9517A , TCA9534 , TCA9534A , TCA9535 , TCA9538 , TCA9539 , TCA9539-Q1 , TCA9543A , TCA9544A , TCA9545A , TCA9546A , TCA9548A , TCA9554 , TCA9554A , TCA9555 , TCA9617A , TCA9617B , TCA9800 , TCA9801 , TCA9802 , TCA9803

 

  1.   Understanding the I2C Bus
    1.     Trademarks
    2. 1 Electrical Characteristics
      1. 1.1 Open-Drain for Bidirectional Communication
        1. 1.1.1 Open-Drain Pulling Low
        2. 1.1.2 Open-Drain Releasing Bus
    3. 2 I2C Interface
      1. 2.1 General I2C Operation
        1. 2.1.1 START and STOP Conditions
        2. 2.1.2 Repeated START Condition
      2. 2.2 Data Validity and Byte Format
      3. 2.3 Acknowledge (ACK) and Not Acknowledge (NACK)
    4. 3 I2C Data
      1. 3.1 Writing to a Slave On The I2C Bus
      2. 3.2 Reading From a Slave On The I2C Bus

3 I2C Data

Data must be sent and received to or from the slave devices, but the way that this is accomplished is by reading or writing to or from registers in the slave device.

Registers are locations in the slave's memory which contain information, whether it be the configuration information, or some sampled data to send back to the master. The master must write information into these registers in order to instruct the slave device to perform a task.

While it is common to have registers in I2C slaves, please note that not all slave devices will have registers. Some devices are simple and contain only 1 register, which may be written directly to by sending the register data immediately after the slave address, instead of addressing a register. An example of a single-register device would be an 8-bit I2C switch, which is controlled via I2C commands. Since it has 1 bit to enable or disable a channel, there is only 1 register needed, and the master merely writes the register data after the slave address, skipping the register number.