Read / Write a USB Stick with STM32F103C8 - c

I'm trying to read/write data to a USB flash drive.
I have read in the reference manual that STM32F103xx has a USB peripheral but can only act as a device in the communication. From what I understood, I need it to act as a host. Is there anyway to do this operation without USB to UART converters as I'm trying to be more efficient(in a financial sense).
I seem to find no clue on the internet regarding this particular MCU.
If this can be done only with a UART converter, please show me where to look.
Thank you!

As multiple people pointed out, STM32F103C8 can't be a host in the USB communication protocol, therefore the transfer of data cannot be done.
I made a mistake when I thought the USB to UART converter will solve the problem. The converter doesn't have a mass storage protocol implemented on it, therefore it cannot read the data.
See the comments for answers.

Related

Implementing a usb interface for ATtiny816 microcontrollers

I am trying to receive and send some data from a computer to an ATtiny816 through USB. Can an ATtiny816 microcontroller communicate with a computer through USB? If yes, how should it be connected?
I'm not sure if this is possible. ATtiny 816 don't have hardware USB so you have to write software stack by yourself. Take a look on V-USB library for AVR chips. It's software USB stack for most of AVR chips.
I have second idea, but question is for what you need USB? If you want to parse some commands from computer you may use USB-UART converter and parse commands from UART interface.

Linux USB device driver misconception

My question is going to be rather vague but I will try to explain as detailed as I can what I am trying to resolve.
Trying to learn Linux kernel USB stack I have started to think of making a simple USB driver for my Atmel evaluation board based on ARM M0+ MCU to run away from Windows tools (Visual Studio plugin).
I have spent few days learning kernel's USB API and come to conclusion of how to make this. My driver aims to make my board connected to PC through USB cable act like a simple USB flash drive. Making that I then can easily program it with a new version of firmware written by me.
I have found that I need to find out specific interface (I am talking about interface in terms of USB specification, not interface we used to use as a code abstraction) that holds an endpoint (pipe) responsible for interaction with flash memory. And then I can map it to character device and interact with it using standard I/O operations that are described in struct file_operations structure.
Simply using cat on /proc/* file descriptor that was created by USB Core subsystem I have investigated that interface responsible for interaction with flash memory holds bulk endpoint (likewise, this terms come from USB specification, CMIIAW) that act as a "descriptor". Linux kernel USB Core subsystem gives neat interfaces to talk to different kind of endpoints whether it control, interrupt, bulk or asynchronous endpoint.
Now I have come closer to my very question.
Also the main transfer unit in communication between two USB devices is abstraction called urb - you allocate it, you fill it, you send it to USB Core subsystem, you read it if it was IN type of urb and, finally, you free it. What is confusing for me and tightly related to my question is the next API include/linux/usb.h:
static inline void usb_fill_bulk_urb(struct urb *urb,
struct usb_device *dev,
unsigned int pipe,
void *transfer_buffer,
int buffer_length,
usb_complete_t complete_fn,
void *context)
Assume I have obtained an information from board's datasheet about where to write a program code. Let's say, we have 0x00100 - 0x10000 memory region. I will compile my code, obtain a binary and then using standard Linux tools or writing a simple user-space wrapper application I will use lseek to set file's offset to 0x00100 and write system call provided with a buffer (binary compiled previously) and it's length.
In kernel space, I will have to allocate urb in write system call handler, fill it with a buffer sent from user space and submit this urb to USB Core.
BUT I can not find a way how to specify an OFFSET set earlier by lseek. Do I miss something? Maybe I missed some concepts or, perhaps, I am watching in a wrong way?
When your embedded Linux device acts as a USB mass storage device, the flash as a peripheral on Linux device is unmounted, and the gadget driver is loaded. Linux then loses control to the flash, and now the PC connected to your Linux device fully controls the flash. This is because a flash as a USB device can only has one USb host.
The gadget driver works purely in kernel space. It does not receive or transmit data from/to user space. It calls vfs_read() and vfs_write() to access the files on the flash, with an field offset. The offset is got from the USB commands sent from your host - Windows PC.
There is no way to specify offset using USB subsystem's API. I misunderstood whole conception of USB as communication protocol, unwise me. You must first learn underlying protocol your device uses to communicate with others.
If your device acts as a USB HID device then learning specification of how to exchange data with USB HID device is the way to go. If there is something proprietary then you can do nothing but reverse engineer it (listening USB packets with a sniffer on system where a driver for your device exists).
As for my board it has embedded debugger that serves as a communication module besides being debugger itself. Specifically, my device is equipped with EDBG and here is a link on description of protocol it uses for communication.

Is there a suitable Two wire interface / I2C reading writing library in Contiki OS for Atmega128 platform?

I wish to read the EUI64 address from an AT24MAC602 memory chip interfaced to an Atmega128rfa1 MCU over the Two wire interface. I tried to modify the I2C master drivers which are available for other platforms to suit my need. However, I wasn't able to carry out these modifications successfully as the program stopped responding as soon as the slave address was written to the twi bus with Write flag set. I failed to uncover the underlying reasons for the same.
As Contiki OS is quite popular, i thought someone might have already come up with contiki specific libraries for reading writing over TWI interface for Atmega128rfa1 MCU. If so, please provide pointers to the twi drivers or documentation for the same, or suggest factors that should be considered for developing such drivers. Thank you.
If you don't have any luck finding/creating a driver for the TWI peripheral, you might consider emulating it by configuring the SDA/SCL pins as general I/O and then implementing the TWI protocol yourself. If you're just doing a one-time read of a chip ID then speed probably isn't a big concern, so this could work if you get desperate. Google should throw up a few examples of emulated TWI.

Sending signals to USB port C

I want to send a simple 5V signal to the usb port. The USB cabel's insulation will be removed and connected to relay connected to an electric door system. I think I should write this code in C. Can somebody give me a hint?
Thanks in advance!
You can't do this directly but you can buy low cost USB hobbyist/prototyping/interface boards from a number of different vendors, e.g. http://www.devasys.com/usbi2cio.htm.
You might also want to try asking on http://electronics.stackexchange.com since this is more of a hardware interfacing question than a programming question.

How to find the base address of usb to parallel port device in Linux?

I am doing IO programming in C in Ubuntu. And I need the base address of the port to write data.
My laptop dont have a parallel port. So I bought a USB to Parallel port connector. I plugged in the device and its getting detected in /dev/usb/lp0
I ran "lsusb" to see the list of devices and I can see the ID also. But how can I get the base address ? For the usual hardware parallel devices, the base address is 0x0378. this address is not getting detected while using USB to Parallel device.
Please help.
A USB parallel port doesn't have a base address - it's not a meaningful concept for USB. I'm afraid the days of doing I/O on PC hardware via in and out instructions ended a few years ago, though lots of old tutorials still survive on the web.
You can write bytes to the parallel port as a character device, and these will appear on the printer port pins. The USB adapter will expect the other end to handshake data exactly like a printer. If you want to do general I/O prototyping, you're probably better off with a simple USB microcontroller like an Arduino.
Further discussion here.
If you are still interested to use this USB-to-parallel-printer device for your own bit-banging, it's important to know that their built-in firmware always allows controlling of D0..D7, INIT (as outputs), /ERR, ONL, PE (as inputs), but never for /ACK, BUSY (inputs), /STB, /AF, /SEL (outputs) pins.
And you need an 8-bit latch (e.g. 74HCT574) for catching data while strobing.
See here (https://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~ygu/bastelecke/PC/USB2LPT/faq#DIY)
especially for possible data rates.
Accessing from software side is a bit complicated but possible, and you may have to re-structure your software and hardware for making such adapters useable. I don't know for Linux case how to access, but IMHO you don't need to write a kernel-mode driver.

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