I have a device that takes low current 3-12v input signal to do it's magic and I would like to interface it to my linux box. What kind of options do I have on this? It would be great to have some low-cost possibly user-space solution.
If I understand right, you need to control your box by changing 3-12v input signals to it. Here's the choices I can think of from the top of my head:-
a: Using RS232 serial handshake lines. RTS/CTS can usually controlled programatically as "on/off" signals without driver development using IOCTL calls.
b: Use a "GPI dongle" such as the Advantech ADAM range. These typically take serial or TCP/IP inputs and convert them to suitable output signals.
c: You may be able to do something with a parallel printer port if your PC stil has such a thing.
As shodanex says, be aware that RS232 levels are NOT directly compatible with TTL/CMOS inputs so you may need some minor level shifting/clamping electronics to fix this.
Related
I'm building a linux-based cashless device and trying to achieve communication with VMC in vending machines over UART directly without needing additional hardware adapter to convert between 8-bit and 9-bit frame data.
I'm only using the cashless device, no intention to connect any other peripheral to the VMC.
I read questions asked about this before, some of them stressed on the need to an adapter, others suggested possible hacks to achieve the 9-bit to 8-bit conversion, but still can't find a confirmed working and stable solution.
My question is, Is it possible (and reliable) to achieve this using a pure software solution? and how?
Thanks
Yes.
The 9th bit is a control bit. It will show if the data is to be interpreted as an address or as data. If you are communicating with one device and sending only data you want to strip the 9th bit out and only look at data frames. Check and see if it's always zero:
If controlBit = 0:
ProcessData(byte)
Else:
print("This is an address: " + byte)
EDIT:
Many people have reported that your connection will not be stable without special hardware due to timing problems.
Instead of reinventing the wheel you can use opensource code as a starting point.
https://github.com/mhaqs/vendiverse/wiki/Programming-the-VMC
This way you don't have to make the same mistakes over and over again.
I'm in a situation where we are hooking up to a device that may speak a variety of different baud rates depending on model. Some of which may be non-standard, like 10000, but that's another problem for another day.
Ideally I could use Qt to auto detect the baud rate, but from my research that's likely not possible for a few reasons, which I'm okay with. However, is there any native Linux based method to auto detect the baud rate of the connected device? Even a 3rd party open source application could suffice.
Linux serial drivers don't support autobauding, because most hardware doesn't support it, because there's no agreement on how it might work. It's highly application-specific.
If you're using FTDI serial adapters, then most of them support the bit-bang mode, and you should use them as a digital oscilloscope in such a mode to get a bitstream that's very easy to autobaud on.
On other devices, the simplest way towards autobauding is to set the device to 2-3x the highest baudrate you expect, then treat the input data like a chunked digital oscilloscope, taking account of error bits, and use heuristics to detect the baud rate. It will succeed in a surprising number of cases, but you must get the statistical model of the data source right. I don't know of any pre-canned solutions for that.
Some additional kernel support could be had to better timestamp the input from the UART (whether hardware or USB) and thus decrease the uncertainity in your data and thus the number of samples you need to take to detect baud.
Some of which may be non-standard, like 10000, but that's another problem for another day.
No biggie. I figured it out 16 years ago :) This is the answer you're looking for. If you think that the API is sick as in very, very sick, then you'd be right.
I have a telephony modem which gives voice to my interfaced application via a serial USB ttyUSB0 in 16bit PCM 8000hz. I am able to capture this data and play with audacity. I want this port to be detected as a sound device in linux (I am on ubuntu). Is it possible? Are there any other options?
I'm guessing you are using a huawei 3G modem or something similar which gives ttyUSB1 for audio. Make sure you have the serial driver binded to it. Then simply pass the port itself as a "file" for input for any program of your choice.You need root access for that.You figured out the audio settings so it must be enough.I have voice calling working in UBUNTU 11.10 with Huawei. So let me know if i can help any further.
Ok, I see it's very old question but answers helped me to get a right direction so I decided to help others.
The one way to achieve (in addition to below) what are you are
looking for is to write dynamic kernel module.
Have it register as a sound device, and check that it has a GSM
module present (which module is it exactly can be recognized in
dmesg, lsmod, or output).
Then establish communication between user space representation as a
sound card and serial usb module.
The other way is to get module that you recognized by dmesg, lsmod and extend its functionality as a sound card.
All are tricky tasks because:
in the first case you have to resolve intermodule communication at the kernel level...... which is, lets say, a little hard even if programmer has a right background in subject.
the second case is hard in that you have to deal with:
USB stack (which is little unpleasant for human beings) and
sound subsystem (which is a little burdensome because of historical issues).
Without being an experienced kernel programmer there are small chances to succeed.
I'm using a Virtex 5 FPGA and want to have a few +5/0 I/O pins to communicate with a microcontroller. The only peripherials I've used on the board so far are pushbuttons and switches and no one I've asked seems to know the simplest way to do this I/O. I've looked around the board specification but haven't found any simple way of doing it. I would appreciate any advice you might have.
This is not an easy thing to do. If you don't have the schematic of the board, then you need to get volt meter with some fine pitch probes and reverse engineer the board.
It is pretty easy if you have 2 boards, with one board it can be really hard since the BGA signals may not be connected to a via and therefore not available on the bottom of the board, and even if they are, then you don't know exactly which pin they are connected to. But with some luck, you can find them since the VIA can only be connected to 4 possible pins surrounding it!
The first thing you need to do is to identify your chip, find the BGA print of the IC from Xilin'x web site.
If your board has some buttons already, then if you are lucky, those signals may be routed to the pins of the FPGA that are available on the bottom of your board. Here are the things you need to do:
Make sure you have good ESD protection to perform these test
Put your voltmeter into 'buzzer' mode
Check the pins of your connector and find out how it is connected, see if there is a pull-up and/or pull-down resistors on the board
when you find the 'active' pin of your connector, start connecting the other probe to the VIAs one by one
When you hear a buzz, make a note of the position (guess or measure the distance between the side of t he IC and the location of the via)
Identify the 4 possible pins that the signal can be connected to
Write a code to get all those 4 signals and connect them to ChipScope
In Chip Scope, capture all 4 signals and see which one is the one with the right connection!
alternative, you can create a design with inputs only, capture all the inputs and put them into a memory block and create a trigger logic to capture all the signals whenever any of the inputs changes, after lots of work and analysis, you will find the correct pins.
Anyway, these are just crazy ideas since this is a really difficult thing to do without having the PCB info of the board.
Good luck with your hacking.
How can I configure one pin for input and another for the output?
If I am not wrong this could be done with GPIO registers that controlls device pins that are not connected to peripherical functions.
Look in UM10360.PDF, Chapter 9: GPIO. There you can find the description for the FIOxDIR direction registers, as well as the reigisters for querying, setting and clearing GPIO pins.
I also strongly recommend looking at the CMSIS Standard Peripherial Driver Library that NXP offers for 175x/176x, look in microcontroller support documents. Edit: There are lots of sample code in this Library.
https://github.com/dwelch67
I have a number of lpc based examples. You are looking for the IODIR register, depending on the port and flavor of LPC, there are now what they call fast I/O registers. a one in a bit location means that pin is an output, a zero an input.