CYPRESS EZ-USB?

I am still in school and would like some advice on what type of developmen board I should use from Cypress that I plan on intergrating into a devic for a senior project.

Requirements:

mcu with general IO to accept a single bit (im thinkin low-speed/inturrupt xfer/I want my device to be fall under the HID clas of usb peripherals so I do not have to write device drivers) development enviornment: firmware development board:to download firmward and program the mcu

I have been doing some research but putting everything in perspective i somewhat hard for me. Can anyone give me advice on the best/cheapest(our school only reimburse up to $500.00) solution for me. I keep hearing about EZ-USB. Does anyon have experience with this development kit?

Am I understanding it right thinking that you plugg in one of Cypress MUC's into the development board and firmware gets downloaded onto th chip?

Reply to
l3d007
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EZUSB solutions bootstrap off the USB port. The MCU has internal RAM for code. It can either boot off an external EEPROM (code is loaded into RAM at POR, then the MCU resets) or the PC can load the firmware over the USB interface. Most people use the latter method because it's cheaper. Basically, when you attach the micro to the PC, it enumerates as a generic Cypress device. Cypress provides a bootstrap driver that detects the generic device, downloads your custom firmware, then forces the device to detach and reattach. On reattach, it assumes whatever personality (and VID/PID) you implemented in your firmware.

DeVaSys sells low-cost development kits, e.g. ($79). Couple this with a free copy of sdcc and you're in business.

Reply to
larwe

The cypress eval board is rather pricey, but it may be within your school supplied budget.

Cheapest I know of is the USB2 interface module from Digilent, intended to be used with their FPGA boards but really just the cypress chip on a board with connectors, for around fifty bucks. Should have plenty of I/Os for your purposes. Of course you'd be replacing their firmware with your own (may have to remove a jumper or cut a trace to disable their config eeprom so that it comes up as an unprogrammed device).

Another fun option would be an FPGA board carrying that chip, such as the Nexys. But then you'd have to put a minimal program into the FPGA to route the cypress chip signals to one of hte connectors.

Reply to
cs_posting

development

In addition to Larwe's suggestion you can look at

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and

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there should also be some other small board available.

Also look at this

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i don't know if it's for sale, but there's all you need to build one. (All but money :)

Reply to
runner

DLP Design uses the FTDIchip USB device in a number of the products and kits with a variety of microcontrollers. The costs are very reasonable, USB to Microchip PIC18F8722 24MHz for $65 or 12F683 microcontroller for $25, (but you'll need to purchase a programmer from Digikey for about $165).

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Don't like PIC? They also have Ubicom/Parallax

I have no financial interest in DLP Design or FTDIchip, I've just used them before successfully.

Reply to
Freelance Embedded Systems Engineer

Since you want to read a single bit at low rate, there's a cheap and simple alternative.

You can use any USB serial converter cable (

Reply to
jetmarc

If you want an 8051 MCU, why not try a cheap Silabs Toolstick? These are dirt cheap and highly capable.

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Get the starter kit for $24.99. There's no way to get a lower cost, fully operational dev system that can leverage USB.

Or maybe you'd like an msp430 USB stick (16 bit low-power MCU):

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It's a bit more of a challenge to use the USB from a user program with the msp430 (I'm not sure if it can be done - it may only be used for programming/debugging?). The Silabs Toolstick makes that easier and their F360 docking board has super-good A/D and screams along at 100 Mhz.

If you want a bit more muscle, the Luminary ARM USB device is cool, and it lets you leverage the USB in your own programs as a virtual COM port, in addition to using it as an "emulator" programming/debugging device. This is a 32-bit processor that runs at 50 mhz with no wait states. Because of 32 bit data paths and a linear address space, this can out-perform a 100 Mhz 8051 by a wide margin in most applications.

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The luminary board is awesome and has a nice little graphics display with a pre-programmed video game! I'd recommend this if you're not married to the 8051 architecture. This is a good forward-looking technology that may help your career (ARMs have gained a lot of ground in recent years).

Eric

Reply to
Eric

The LMI board is good for high performance device. If you want the absolutely lowest cost USB device, the AT90USB82 ($1.50) would be best. A 4K USB boot loader is perloaded, so you can write a 4K application without any external hardware. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be available for a few more months.

See:

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(with AT90USB162).

Reply to
linnix

linnix wrote in news:1182900881.267983.219870 @m37g2000prh.googlegroups.com:

I once knew a mechanical engineer who would recomend items made of "unobtanium". Seems similar to your device.

Even if the chip was free, a student, (and most people trying to do something) want something on a working board.

I recommend getting one of the keyspan usb/rs232 dongles. It has a FX1 and can be programmed with SDCC. Look for "hacking the keyspan" on google. It is not trivial, but Cypress has a downloadable devkit. You can get a keyspan for $20 to $40 dollars at Fry's. I don't know where you are in the world, but mailorder will also work - there are several models of keyspan, verify the one you want has a ezusb/fx chip. Probably the free Keil demo will work for your project and will be much better than trying to roll your own with SDCC.

By far the hardest part of your project will be understanding and getting to work a windows .inf driver link.

Regards, Steve

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Reply to
Steve Calfee

We have working boards, but the chips are not available until Sept (according to Atmel).

The At90USBs have on-board boot loader, which can be activiated by two switches (REST on, HWB on, REST off, HWB off). The two switches are on the back of the board. There are eight I/O pins plus Power/Ground on the 10 pins header.

There are sample programs from Atmel for generic HID device, keyboard and mouse device, and a CDC (virtual com port) device. The CDC/VCP works on 2000/XP and Linux.

I don't know what our client would charge (as part of a complete system), but it costs about $5 total to make.

Reply to
linnix

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