I'm attempting to use a usb keyboard to control a game I built on a spartan 6 board. I'm struggling to understand the process to get this to work though.
I see the physical usb port on the board (I'm using a xilinx university board on campus). I understand there are AXI IP's for usb2, but they all require a license (and won't let me export the project to sdk if I use them).
I came across the open usb source at http://jorisvr.nl/usb/. I'm thinking this is exactly what I want/need, but I'm struggling to understand how to implement it.
Right now I think I should use xilinx platform studio to create a custom ip. Within that custom ip make use of the vhdl source for open usb. The process of hooking up all the different ports has me at a loss. But the thing I don't understand the most is the PHY (UTMI) block that's required for the open usb to even work. What is that? Do I need to implement it?
I'm a bit lost. Any guidance would be appreciated. The manual for open usb can be found http://jorisvr.nl/files/fpga_usb_serial_manual.pdf.
Related
I recently acquired a Microchip EVB USB7252. I can use it as a USB hub. There are some pins on the board, and I have been looking for ways to use these as an interface between my computer and other devices (preferably my LCD screen).
So I got the IDE + compiler that is supposed to work for this product (MPLAB), but I could find no way to choose my model and get the correct target board.
I was hoping anybody (with likely more experience than me) could steer me in the right direction here. My only previous experience with dev boards is Arduino, where boards show up automatically as COM ports in the IDE. My ultimate goal here is to connect my peripherals to USB without using virtual COM-ports.
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/EV33X03A
You can Try The IDE call "MPLAB" you said
and i think arduino CANT use "Microchip EVB USB7252"
So Try it And Good luck
It's a long way because USB is not easy protocol. You need to read USB specs first. Take a look at http://www.usb.org. Generally USB communicate between host and devices. There is special protocol used in this communication.
Perhaps the easiest way to do this will be using Linux and libusb or similar library. When you achieve some experience with this protocol you may be trying to write your own USB driver. I could also recommend to analyse some USB stacks like in Linux or in U-Boot one first.
If you have possibility then I'd also try to use some hardware/software USB protocol analyzers for some overview how does the communication look like.
I have a microcontroller STM32F051 and I want to program it. I looked for IDE that I would be able to use and I found TRUESTUDIO that I'm using. I wanted to know how should I do to send the program I made into the microcontroller. Do I need any specific programmer (like an electronic device for Microchip Pics) ? When I clic the button debug, I get an error
"Error in initializing ST-Link device. Reason: Failed to connect to device. Please check power and cabling to target."
I'm not sure if I misunderstood something. I download the software and I selected my specific version of microcontroller, but it seems that it doesn't recognize it...
Yes, no matter what the mcu you will need some interface, be it as simple as a usb connector tied to the chip, or a debug header using some other device or electronics. For an stm32 chip many of the discovery boards and the nucleo boards (in particular the ones with a breakaway end, you dont have to break it off, just remove some jumpers to use it on other devices (not necessarily ST devices)). These parts also have a serial bootloader inside that you cant change so it is always there, and can sometimes use one of the nucleo stlink debuggers (do some research as to ones that offer a virtual uart, not all of them do, cheaper than the dedicated stlink dongles) or say an ftdi usb breakout board (under $2 on ebay).
There are numerous options for programming these parts as in writing software, can just use gnu tools and roll your own drivers (pretty easy the documentation is pretty good), get one of the ST libraries that they offer (for free) or if you have a Nucleo you might be able to use mbed or arduino to develop.
We really need to know more about the board you have this part on, is it just a breakout board or as asked in the comments did you buy a nucleo board or a discovery board? Are you running linux, windows or mac or other or are flexible on what host?
I am a very novice embedded developer and I am trying to develop a commercial product using Windows Embedded Compact and a Toradex Apalis T30 COM. Firstly just excuse me here, I am not a professional nor a trained engineer, merely a hobbyist trying to push the boundaries so forgive me if this is supposed to be trivial. I should also state that because of this I have no low level USB experience. I would like to use WEC 2013 but Toradex does not quite have it ready yet so for I guess at least another month I am stuck on WEC 7 if that makes any difference.
My problem is that I cannot seem to figure how one goes implementing USB Client functionality in WEC. As in, I want my device to be able to connect to my PC as a USB client with the PC being the host. Now by default it connects with the Active Sync (now Device Center or something) application and that allows serial communication of sorts if I am not mistaken but I really don't want to make my device dependent on ActiveSync as that will leave a very bad impression on customers as it doesn't look very professional and bears to much of an association with yesteryear's Windows Mobile.
My device is a 3D printer and I am assuming that there is no native USB class for 3D printers. All 3D printers I know of merely use a USB COM port to communicate and I guess that that should be fine for me two. Now what I want to know is how I can make my device appear as a plug and play USB COM port (able to support all the major desktop operating systems)? I know I can use an FTDI chip to do this with a UART port on my device but I am thinking that that is a bit of a waste given the fact that my COM has a built-in USB client port.
One would think that WEC would have built-in support for something like this but I cannot find any documentation regarding how to use it if it does indeed exist. The best I can find is http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee481935.aspx but the page does not really say anything useful.
PS. I cannot really afford to buy a USB vendor-id so I am hoping there is a solution to this that does not require one.
For windows embedded, you have to manually write a driver or a set of registry entries with the right Device Class ID, Vendor ID and Product ID. Once that is done, you need to integrate it in Windows Embedded and rebuild the solution.
I have a Korg NanoKey which I'd like to use to control a simple synthesizer I've designed on the Arduino platform. (I have an Arduino Uno.) Basically, I don't care about MIDI, I just want to read what note the keyboard has pressed down, but if MIDI is the only way I can do that, then it's okay with me. So my big question is, how do I do this? I haven't been able to find anyone else on the Internet who has already done this.
But more specifically, I see two challenges: First, I'd like to plug my NanoKey directly into the Arduino's USB port, but then I'm wondering if the Arduino would provide the necessary power to the NanoKey. Second, I'm not sure what protocol I would be reading. Can I just read MIDI signals as described in this tutorial?
I don't want to curb your enthusiasm but what you're attempting might be a bit hard basket. A USB system consists of a host controller and one or more peripheral devices. It's the host that controls traffic flow to the devices which means that devices can't transmit data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller.
I'm not familiar with either the nanoKey or the Arduino platform but I'd be fairly confident that the nanoKey is a USB "device", normally connected to a computer which would act as the host. So what you would need for this system to work is for the Arduino to act as the host when communicating with the nanoKey. The Arduino schematic shows that the Arduino Uno uses an ATmega8U2 for USB coms. Unfortunately the ATmega8U2 is a USB device, so you've got two peripheral devices but no host controller to facilitate the transfer of data between them. You'd be better off using a development board for a micro that provides either USB Host or USB On-the-Go.
I opened up a Korg Nano controller yesterday and was surprised to discover that there's an AVR mega32 inside. It would be a significant undertaking, but with a bit of work you could probably work out the schematic and reprogram it yourself using their programming header breakout. You might not end up with much more functionality than you've got this other way, but it would be very educational.
I agree with the Jono - you are biting off a lot - it might even end up easiest to hook the keys up to the Arduino directly - tearing out the electronics and figuring out a way to multiplex the keys into a single channel without losing polyphony (resistor 'ladder' maybe). I any case, good luck. Amusingly, you'd making an analog keyboard to plug into a digital synthesizer.
Quick and Dirty Arduino MIDI Over USB demonstrates how to send/receive MIDI out over USB, but unfortunately, this probably isn't any help for what you are trying to do, since he's found a way to send and receive MIDI signals from a USB host, not act as a USB host himself - the opposite of your problem. However, I thought perhaps it would be of use, if you ever wanted to control your device from a computer.
As mentioned in the other posts, you would need to use a separate chip to provide the USB Host interface. Here's a great guide to using the USB Host shield by Circuits#Home to interface with an Akai LPK25 (USB Midi Keyboard).
http://blog.makezine.com/2010/11/30/usbhacking/
The Arduino sketch is provided, so you should be able to try it out, however debugging the USB Host connection could get tricky real fast if it doesn't work out of the box.
I want to program a microcontroller (AVR) to control some leds through USB. It's just out of interest in how to build and program USB devices.
There are some AVR microcontrollers that support the USB protocol or I could implement the USB protocol in an another microcontroller myself, but I wonder what to use to write your own drivers on the computer.
My level in system programming: total noob (hence the question)
So what is the literature you people would advice to get good knowledge of the USB technology and how to write your own drivers and beyond?
P.S.: I know:
C (probably will need it here)
Java (probably won't need it here)
Python (hope can use it here)
assembler (hopefully won't need it here XD).
...
P.P.S: driver development differs for different OS's. I use Linux and Windows, so any material related to one or both of these systems is welcome.
Well, although you can develop and write your own USB driver, the beauty of USB is that you don't need to write your own driver. the USB Implementers Forum has defined class specifications for all the standard device classes. If you can make your device fit into a standard device class the driver has already been written for you!
If you truly want to become familiar with USB development, you should start by reviewing the USB approved class specification documents.
If you are into framework for AVR microcontrollers with hardware USB then take a look into LUFA, and if you are into AVRs with software USB then look into V-USB. They have both implemented many USB classes so you don't have to do it on your own - just use them.
That sounds like a great project! I'd suggest starting off with something a little simpler since you're - as you say - a "total n00b". I'm not sure what hardware you currently have (or have in mind) but what I would suggest for the total beginner is the STK500. It's a development board that's very well supported in both Linux and Windows and will give you the most flexibility. It comes with LEDs and switches built in for your projects, but you will need to get a microcontroller. And for that I recommend the ATMega32, a great multi-purpose IC that's also well supported and has lots of documentation on the web.
Once you get those I suggest you do your development on Linux using avr-gcc (make sure to also install avr-libc). If you're using Ubuntu it's easy to get all the packages you need:
% sudo apt-get install gcc-avr avr-libc avrdude
Those should get you up and running. I'd suggest Googling around for help writing your first programs but another good resource is the online materials for this class at Cornell.
That's enough to get your feet wet with AVR microcontrollers and the development tools. The sky is the limit at that point but since you said you want to get into USB I'd suggest using the excellent V-USB framework to have your ATMega32 act as a USB device. After that, as they say, the steps to flipping LEDs are a piece of cake :).
I wonder what to use to write your own
drivers on the computer
libusb (here, here and here)
wdk
WinDriver
For libusb variants info read this
You could us libusb. It's powerful and cross-platform.
But what you're trying to do is a rather simple control interface. You can sidestep most of the complexity by using HIDAPI, I think.
http://www.signal11.us/oss/hidapi/
HID devices often use generic drivers that come packaged into the OS. That way you don't actually have to write any drivers ever, you just make your device compliant with the generic driver and tailor the client software to it.
I think this is what's usually done in the hobbyist electronics field, which is what you're interested in here.
HIDAPI is even recommended for simple communications with HID devices in the libusb FAQ since its a bit more complicated to do it across platforms using libusb.
One good way to go is just to develop a HID device, since the driver is built in to most higher level OSes and pretty flexible for simple IO like you are talking about. Another good option is just using a USB RS232 device or software. I use PICs which have a number of nice devices with USB onboard.
I had built my own test bed based on the ARDUINO UNO and i was using the ionlabs programmer of type usbasp and it worked perfectly fine but it did not allow to convert the TTL back to Rs-232 and hence i couldn't use the features such as serial.print() and i had to install the ftdi cable which allowed me to do this.
The drivers were the libusb 1.xx working just fine.
If you want to program the AVR you can use the ARDUINO software bundle or the stino to upload the programs.
You need to know c(only basics).
I created a USB-keyboard adapter last year for my capstone. I did not do the host programming but used existing code that you can find on the web.But I did program the device side and for that I got a lot of help from this website Teensy Look into their "Code Library" which has code for Keyboard, Mouse and others. Also, the USB protocol handbook will always be useful and you should always consult it when you are doing stuff with USB.
I wonder whether your AVB acts as a host or device. I guess your board is a usb device and you need to light the leds on your board. So, it may be a good way to initialize your board as a HID device. To achieve this goal, you need a HID gadget software stack running on your board. References as follows:
gadget framework in uboot
HID specefication usb org
debug tools such as USB Protocol Analyzer
libusb running on Host PC to send packets
The Microsoft documentation area of the WDK (Windows Development Kit) is recently available on MSDN. There is a section on USB, though you would be best to read the earlier sections first, in particular the "Getting Started" areas. They assume you'll be using C as the programming language for driver development.
WDK Site
WDK - USB Section
For Linux, the Linux USB website should be able to point you in the right direction. In particular you'll want the Programming Guide for Linux USB Device Drivers.