I am planning to develop a simple Profibus master (FDL level) in Linux, more specifically on a Raspberry Pi. I have an RS485 transceiver based on a MAX 481. The master must work on a bus where there are multiple masters.
According to the Profibus specification, you must count the number of '1' bits on the bus to determine when it is time to rotate the access token. Specifically after 11 '1' bits the next frame starts. 11 bits is also exactly one frame.
In Linux, how can I detect these 11 '1' bits? They won't be registered by the driver as there is no start bit. So I need a stream of bits, instead of decoded bytes.
What would be the best approach?
Unfortunately, making use of microcontroller/microprocessor UART is a BAD choice.
You can generate 11 bits setting START_BIT, STOP_BIT, and PARTITY_BIT (even) in your microcontroller UART peripheral. Maybe you will be lucky to receive whole bytes from a datagram without losses.
However, PROFIBUS DP datagram is up to 244 bytes and PROFIBUS DP requires NO IDLE bits between bytes during datagram transmission. You need a UART hardware or UART microcontroller peripheral with a FIFO or register that supports up to 244 bytes - Which is very uncommon, once this requirement is very specific from PROFIBUS.
Another aspect is related to the compatibility of baud rates. Usually, the whole range of PROFIBUS PD baud rates is not fully available on common microcontrollers UART.
My suggestions:
Implement this UART part on FPGA and interface with Raspberry Pi using e.g. SPI. You can decide on the extension of PROFIBUS stack portion you can 'outsource' to FPGA and the part you can keep on RPi.
Use an ASIC (maybe ASPC2, but outdated) and add another compatible processor to implement a deterministic portion of the stack. Later you can interface this processor with your RPi.
Implement using an industrial communication dedicated processor (Like TI Sitara am335x).