Adding an ethernet port to a Raspberry Pi Zero

This also applies to a Raspberry Pi A+, which doesn’t come with any network interfaces at all.

This is an adaptation of a post at raspi.tv, describing the same procedure, but with different hardware and parts. All credits to the original author.

Parts

I’m using a mini ENC28J60 ethernet chip with headers already soldered on for easy wiring. In this article, I’m connecting it to a Raspberry Pi Model A+ V1.1, but the procedure, wiring and pin numbering is identical to the Pi 2, Pi 3 and both of the Pi Zero’s.

This ethernet chip has a 25MHz crystal. This number matters in the interface configuration later in the post. If you’re using a different chip, make note of what kind of crystal it has.

Pictures pending…

Wiring

My wiring is a bit different from the original post, as I have a different chip.

Chip Pin  Pi Pin (BCM)
NT        GP25
SO        GP9
SCK       GP11
VCC       3V3
SI        GP10
CS        GP8
GND       GND

Pictures pending…

Configuration

Add the dtoverlay enabling the chip. This seem to imply dtparam=spi=on, so I’m not specifying it explicitly.

# The ethernet chip has a 25MHz crystal
dtoverlay=enc28j60,int_pin=25,speed=25000000

The crystal on my chip says 25 000 (picture pending…), which means 25 000 KHz, which equals 25 MHz, which again equals 25 000 000.

Test

Time to see if it works. Before powering up the Pi, make sure the wiring is correct. Really, double (triple), check the wiring to avoid damaging the Pi and the Card.

If you’re running a headless setup, you can see if it’s getting an IP address by snooping DHCP on the local network.

(pictures pending…)

Connection speed

I’m getting 630kbps with default clock, and 969kbps with the 25MHz clock. This equals roughly 8Mbit and is acceptable for my use.

I tested this using curl on the local network. This test might not be a good one, as the bottleneck may have been SD card write speeds on the Pi itself.

References

• raspi.tv/2015/ethernet-on-pi-zero-how-to-put-an-ethernet-port-on-your-pi