Author Topic: USB host support planned ?  (Read 7130 times)

Offline Badabok

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USB host support planned ?
« on: July 21, 2010, 10:39:41 AM »
Hi every one !

Does anyone knows when the USB HOST driver will be integrated to µtasker ?

There is a software workaround solution to provide µtasker the capacity to read USB mass storage device ?

Thx.

Offline mark

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Re: USB host support planned ?
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2010, 11:19:05 PM »
Hi

USB host (and OTG) support was originally planned for the end of 2009 but its development is behind schedule due to other features taking over priority in the mean time. It is now anticipated that mass storage for USB memory stick may be available (initially for Coldfire) later this year.

The problems with mass storage host is that memory stick compatibility is quite difficult (a few memory sticks will probably be chosen as reference and others will be more 'hit-or-miss'). The functionality is also not as popular as originally foreseen, but still is a standard reference feature that should exist.

Due to the complexity of a host development as well as the file system support (which is however now available in form of the utFAT module) there is no quick workaround other than integrating another already existent module.

Note that host mode will be started once all existing uTasker processor projects have been developed to include both USB device CDC (communication device class) and MSD (mass storage device) classes. This is already the case for the SAM7X and Coldfire development projects and also as Beta for The LPC17XX and LPC2XXX projects. It is hoped that AVR32, STM32 and Luminary Micro projects will also soon be at the same state.

Regards

Mark

PS. I believe that there are some USB peripheralsthat can communicate with a processor via UART or SPI and take over the USB host interface and mass storage class - possibly including file system too(?). Such a device may also be a method of quite simply adding such functionality to a project.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2010, 11:22:00 PM by mark »

Offline mhoneywill

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Re: USB host support planned ?
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2010, 02:10:58 AM »
PS. I believe that there are some USB peripheralsthat can communicate with a processor via UART or SPI and take over the USB host interface and mass storage class - possibly including file system too(?). Such a device may also be a method of quite simply adding such functionality to a project.

One part that Mark might be thinking about is the Vinculum from FTDI http://www.ftdichip.com/FTProducts.htm#Vinculum
« Last Edit: July 24, 2010, 07:45:19 AM by mhoneywill »