More USB Interface choices

jmg

Besides the 'usual suspects' of FTDI style RS232 USB links, there is a growing series of low cost Microcontrollers, with USB effectively 'for free', and in smaller pin count packages.
Microchip's TSSOP32 PIC32, Freescale, Silabs, - these are smarter than FTDI, but needed some code, and the flash nature could be less 'bench friendly'

I see NXP now have another in their small LPC11Uxx series, now with USB code in ROM.

http://www.nxp.com/news/press-releases/2011/11/nxp-delivers-industry-first-arm-cortex-m0-microcontrollers-with-integrated-usb-drivers.html

The details so far does not say if you can get useful work _solely_ from the ROM, or if some small FLASH kernal is needed too.

A part that allowed SFR access via USB/ROM, could be a useful 'no code' peripheral - PC code would be enough to config a timer for CLK out, for example, or Select a ADC channel and read.

Toby Seckshund

I want a USB interface that would be happy with Windoze out of the box. At work one of the four of us seems hell bent on reloading music download stuff so as a result the IT gits have taken away our local admin rights and rebuilt the computers. So now I cannot get any non generic USB drivers in.

I recently got a DuinoMite (PIC32) to play with and that pops up on the computer as a USB2.

Dr_Acula

Very interesting. I'm looking for a chip that can be soldered by mere mortals (ie DIP). Right now my best solution is a $2 USB to serial adaptor from ebay but the Proptool has a bug introduced a few years ago that prevents download of large programs. BST is the answer for the moment. @Toby, those adaptors do work with windows out of the box because all the ones I have never came with driver disks. I'm waiting for technical support to get back to me from Parallax, but meanwhile, yes I agree it is worth exploring other options.

I wonder if the Prop II will have enough smarts to have a USB slave driver encoded into ROM?

Leon

I don't really see the point in using a USB controller with more processing power than the Propeller itself. You might as well use the chip on its own.

There are lots of small 8-bit devices with USB, in DIL, such as the PIC18f2455. They are quite easy to use, with free C libraries. Here is a project of mine using one:

http://www.leonheller.com/usb/index.html

jmg

Leon wrote: »

I don't really see the point in using a USB controller with more processing power than the Propeller itself. You might as well use the chip on its own.

There are lots of small 8-bit devices with USB, in DIL, such as the PIC18f2455. They are quite easy to use, with free C libraries. Here is a project of mine using one:

http://www.leonheller.com/usb/index.html

The point is not really the 'processing power', it is more to do with what is in ROM, and the peripherals that can allow things like Clock Generation and timing/frequency measurement - as well as price.
There is very little adder for 32 bit these days, and the core is less appealing, than the better timers, for example.
Any core can pump bytes

I downloaded and quickly scanned the NXP code, but it looks early beta, and does not mention what is in ROM on those newest parts.
In theory, it should be able to slash the code-complexity, and give more focus on 'test and measure' features.