I have an Orange Pi + 2 single board computer with the ability to connect an external hard drive via SATA.
Armbian is installed on the hard disk, the bootloader is in the onboard memory of the board.
Any command to turn off the device leads to the same result: the indicators on the board go out, it is no longer available via SSH, but the hard disk, any devices connected via USB continue to work, and the image via HDMI is also displayed on the screen.
How to completely turn off the device so that the hard drive stops correctly?
I believe that if you are capable of powering the device off using the operating system's menu, then it should be safe to cut the power off from the device itself. I have a raspberry pi 4 and have a little USB-C adapter that has a simple power switch which makes this concept very convenient for me. Cutting power to a turned-on, working device is very dangerous as it can damage critical files that could be being written. For this reason, it is probably smart to back up the device and also make sure that you are powering the device off through the operating system so that it can finish editing core files in case it needs to.
Related
Why would the file system (CIRCUITPY) of an Adafruit board running CircuitPython not show up when connecting it to a suitable host via a micro usb cable?
This happens to me often, usually when I am copying files via Windows, most often with my trinket which uses the integrated chip flash memory rather than the separate SPI flash chip. Why? I don't know. A bug somewhere obviously. :)
So the solution.
Always save your work files locally or use a source code solution like git
Switch to the boot mode (double click reset)
Drag the erase.uf2 file to clear the flash memory
Drag the circuit python uf2 file to reflash python
Restore your files saved on your PC
Basically, I've made it a habit to assume the flash memory is temporary and volatile and not store any critical code only there.
You can read more about the erase uf2 and reflashing, general troubleshooting here:
https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython/troubleshooting
Besides your first answer about the cable, because of the relatively inexpensive nature of the boards and direct access to their power/ground sometimes the EPROMs that the file system are hosted on just go bad and give unexpected results. Best idea is to:
Test your environment with another board.
Reflash micro python on your board so you can start from scratch (didn't mention if you'd tried that).
JerryN mentioned the most common cause of this is using a USB cable with no data wires. Some USB cables are designed for power-only and have 2 rather than 4 conductors. These will power the device but will prevent mounting of the drive and use of the serial connection over USB.
Unfortunately these cables are often not marked as power-only so can be difficult to spot.
Another case is where CPLAYBOOT (this varies per board, e.g. GEMMABOOT, FEATHERBOOT, TRINKETBOOT) disappears on Windows. This can be caused by installation of the Arduino software which has an old, conflicting driver from 2007. More information on Adafruit: Circuit Playground Express: Troubleshooting.
A very rare case is a mis-seated USB connector. In my case the power was ok but the data wasn't for a good quality cable which had previously worked fine. Unplugging the USB cable at the host end and re-inserting it solved the problem.
I work with an embedded device that has a USB host port. I would like to connect an iPhone to it and communicate via USB. I have done development on this and ported the functionality to connect to usbmux on the iPhone and have successful communication, however there is another problem.
All development was done with the iPhone connected to a powered USB hub that was connected to my device, as soon as I connected it directly, after enumeration it starts to drain the battery of my embedded device and causes a tension (voltage) drop that causes my device to turn off.
I know that after enumeration usb devices can draw up to 500 mA from the usb port, but I was wondering if there was a way to limit that to 100 mA (while still having the iPhone registered).
I found various questions regarding controlling voltage on the data pins or vcc from the usb port and I understand that's not possible, I'm looking for a software solution (although hardware solutions are welcome).
tl;dr: Is there a way to supply the iPhone with less than 500 mA after enumeration? Could I do this in software? Or do I need a hardware solution? I don't want to turn the port on/off, just limit the power draw of the iPhone.
NOTE: I am using Windows CE 6.0, if it is something that can only be done by modifying the drivers, or having direct access, there is no problem.
P.S. also, if there is a way to do this in *nix (or some other open source OS) that I could look at the source code and port it to Windows CE please let me know.
When a device shares its available configurations (see USB chapter 9), it specifies how much power it requires for each configuration. The host should look at all the available configurations and choose which one it wants.
In practice, however, these things don't work so smoothly.
The last time I looked at this, Windows always chose the first configuration. MacOS always chose the lowest power configuration (or highest, I can't remember). I never looked at WinCE or Linux.
If you're writing/modifying the driver, you can set your own rules for which configuration to choose, including looking for one that's 'self powered'. The iPhone, however, might only have one descriptor that always requests 500mA, bus powered. If so, then you're pretty much screwed since there's no way to let the iPhone know it's not OK to draw power.
That being said, I believe all the iPhone accessories are actually USB host (as opposed to USB device), and given that they don't always supply power, the iPhone must be capable of enumerating self powered.
I like the answer by Russ Schultz but I want to add another one:
No.
The descriptor of the peripheral device, iPhone in this case contains bMaxPower. If you enumerate this device, you also accept the power demand. It is not possible to only supply less, lets say 300 mA, if you already enumerated the device with the 500 mA desriptor. If this is what you wanted.
If the device provides multiple configurations, you are as mentioned by Russ free to write a driver which selects the configuration with less power. Hopefully, the device will then only consume the granted power.
Many peripheral devices just don't care. Most devices only provide one configuration with 500 mA. And there are a lot of devices which just consume more than they say ...
I am a total newbie when it comes to programming or even talking directly to drivers. The thing I want to do is hooking up my Raspberry Pi with a 5.1 external USB-soundcard. I would really like to use the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround Pro for that but Creative only provides Windows drivers. Which basically means I will have to write my own driver. While I assume that it will be quite easy to do the audio playback (I have done a fair amount of audio processing in my life) I don't have a clue how to set the USB card volume. I am honestly mostly irritated that the Sound Blaster has its own external volume control (which is the main reason for me to use it). Just applying a simple gain factor on the bit stream would be really easy.
My question is: Could it be that I would have to just set the system volume and that the volume control on the sound card just transfers values to the USB host which I then would have to make sense of?
In case you do not know the Sound Blaster card, would that be the standard way of doing things?
I have the same soundcard and am doing the same thing with the Raspberry Pi. The command you're looking for is:
$ alsamixer
This will open up a terminal-friendly GUI for modifying the audio output volume. You should see the Raspberry Pi onboard audio driver BCM2835 and associated devices alongside your USB audio.
Alternatively, you can set the volume with a simple amixer command:
$ amixer -c 0 set Master 100%
which sets the volume of card 0 to 100%.
It's more than likely that the USB soundcard isn't being chosen as the default and is card 1, rather than card 0.
Check the following guides for further information on RasPi / USB Audio Setup:
http://drewlustro.com/hi-fi-audio-via-airplay-on-raspberry-pi
http://audioplastic.org/blog/2013/01/10/AP1/
I want to be able to turn my PC on and off using an IR-remote sensor that is connected via USB to the PC. The sensor is a custom PCB implemented with an AVR microprocessor and V-USB software USB-implementation.
Now, turning off the PC is no problem with software, but is there any way to turn ON the PC using USB?
(Please note, I'm not talking about booting from USB-stick or USB-power supply ...)
There seem to be two problems:
keeping the USB powered on while the PC is off. It seems that most mainboard have a jumper for this functionality.
bringing the PC back to life. There seems to be no standard functionality for this. The solution is to "press" the PCs power button through the AVR on the USB board. I know, this means extra cable from the USB to the PC, but it seems to be the easiest solution.
Another workaround could be to send the power-on signal to the PC over ethernet. But I guess this will be more complicated than the power button solution and it involves extra cables too.
This Microsoft knowledgebase article describes how to enable "wake on USB" for a USB mouse. I just checked, and my keyboard device entry (on Windows Vista) has the same choice, already checked.
So, if your AVR is emulating a USB keyboard or mouse, it should be possible to wake the computer by sending the proper data.
there must be a way to do this with USB, since some PCs can be switched on with the keyboard. I think this will be some looking whether your mainboard/BIOS support it (it may be you need to turn it on in BIOS, this will probably also ensure your device gets power from USB although the PC is switched off), and whether that V-USB (unknown to me) can send the "wakeup"-signal.
good luck !
How "off" does the PC need to be? Is waking from sleep/suspend enough? The USB standard describes "remote wake-up".
Aside from enabling remote-wakeup, like unwind mentions, software on the PC is not involved in making this work.
I have a device that came with an AC power adapter where the connector is a mini USB plug. The device however doesn't seem to power itself from a computer's USB port (using a standard USB-mini USB cable) unless a specific driver is installed. The driver is only available for Windows. I would like to charge the device from USB plugs on different platforms.
My question is: why isn't power getting to the device without the driver? Is a driver always required for a USB port to start giving power? Or is it this device that's specifically made not to take a charge unless some software routine triggers it to do so?
I guess my question can be summarized as: Is power not present on the USB cable or is it present but the device ignoring it. If the answer is the former, I'll be trying to figure out how to write software that will enable the voltage to always be present.
Thanks
Why isn't power getting to the device without the driver?
USB ports are always powered when the computer is on and the USB control software hasn't detected current overdraw.
Is a driver always required for a USB port to start giving power?
No, the USB port is always required to start off providing power to the device, otherwise the device could never initiate a connection.
Or is it this device that's specifically made not to take a charge unless some software routine triggers it to do so?
This can be complex. To meet the USB spec a device cannot pull more than a few mA until it's registered with the computer.
However, nearly every computer allows the USB port to pull the full 500mA (and more) before it'll shut the power off.
The device you're charging is being nice by not pulling any significant power until the computer gives permission.
Writing software won't help, the device has to register with the USB bus, which will best be done with the driver.
However, the plug in charger doesn't do that. It likely has shorted the two data lines of the USB plug together, which signals the USB device that it's not connected to a computer and can pull the full 500mA without waiting.
Take a USB extension cable, cut off the jacket, and short the data lines (green and yellow, sometimes) together on the end going to the USB device, and leave them cut without touching anything on the end going to the PC, and leave the read and black power wires connected through.
It might work. If not, take the wall charger apart and find out what it's doing with each of the four USB wires, and see if you can duplicate that.
This might be helpful if you are targeting a linux system.
This seems to be platform-specific. In Linux, USB ports are always energized, while on Windows they don't. Thumbdrives with LEDs turn off when unmounted in windows, but in Linux they stay lit. My cellphone's manual says that it can't be charged by a PC, but I regularly do on my linux machine, I guess that's because they don't have a driver and windows won't power up without one.
Have you tried plugging it into a 'dumb' USB port - like the one on a car charger? Those ports are pure power and don't create a USB network. I think.
Unless you have the hardware specs from the manufacturer, I think you are out of luck. You could try reverse engineering the driver to see what it does, but I'd expect it would be cheaper and easier just to buy one with cross platform drivers or charges without the driver.