Minimal USB Host Board

  1. I am seeking a minimal performance and very low cost board that includes USB Host capabilities.
  2. What I actually need is a small board that allows collection of data through a serial port, and connection to a FLASH Memory USB dongle to download the collected data.

Any suggestions on either question?

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Reply to
rongal
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Some embedded controllers here:

Paul Burke

Reply to
Paul Burke

This comes up from time to time. My question is "what is it worth to you". If you could buy a board that you controlled via some serial link (rs232/i2c/spi/ethernet), what would you pay (and what quantity)? And along the same lines what if you could buy a chip (and a few external components) that you could add to your board to do USB host

-- what is it worth?

I have done a host that runs on a Ubicom ip2k processor and is sort of a "reverse FTDI" ie, it handles a host USB port. If a 8051 or PIC etc had some primitive communications routine it could talk to any USB device via this host port. Probably hubs and flash drives would be handled completely in the ip2k, but some devices might need to be controlled by your processor.

I realize that most people on this news group do extremely small runs or one of a kind embedded systems. But on my last embedded project it sure would have been nice if we could have used a USB keychain flash for field upgrades. That got me thinking about this as a product...

I was thinking of productizing this but I cannot tell if it is worth the trouble.

Regards, ~Steve

For a sample of my usb work see:

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where I use an ip2k as a usb bus sniffer for low and full speed buses. There is no "x" in my email address.

Reply to
Steve Calfee

Steve and all interested parties,

I am currently working on a product with a USB master. We are using a USB memory stick for firmware upgrades as suggested. There is also code to save data to the flash stick, in a FET32 file system.

It only cost us $350,000 to get the library code to make this happen.

We are using the SH3-DSP in the product. It has a USB host port bi=uilt in.

The USB code was purchased from

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A USB host is not a simple serial connection. But it was designed to be simple hardware. Its all in the software.

Like running FAT32 over an IDE interface, the hardware interface is so trivial its not even considered in the cost.

Yes a product to do this would be great, but as you mentioned, how long would it take a good engineer with the proper tools and the necessary docs to build such a thing.

I for one would like to see a cost competitive product out there.

But the cost to play in this sandbox is very expensive. We cound not find on off the shelf hardware product, and the off the shelf software product is insane.

I am glad I did not have to pay for it.

As far as one off ( onesee, twosee type products ) forget it !!

Donald

PS: This product has not been in the news yet, so I can not mention it here. But when the time comes, I will want to shout it out everywhere.

pps: If anyone has such a product that can do USB host and not cost an insane amount, please let me (us) know.

Reply to
Donald

350K????? That's obscene. I looked into doing something similar about 2 years ago on a PDA based project and decided it was just too much work for a prototype. We ended up using a virtual Com port driver mapping a com port to USB. You might check out Jungo Tools. For about $3K IIRC they'll sell you a toolkit to develop USB Host drivers on a variety of platforms.

Bob

Reply to
Bob Stephens

For a possible solution see:

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An USB On-The-Go Upgrade of the AT43USB370 USB 2.0 Full-Speed Host/Function Processor. The AT43USB380 provides three modes of operation: OTG, host, and device. It comes with 32-/16-/8-bit system bus interface with DMA capability. It is supported by a comprehensive set of USB software suite including standard USB class drivers.

32/16/8-bit interface - no serial interface though - perhaps worth a look.

Also see:

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I have no experience with the AT43USB380 so I can't be of any assistance.

Gerhard van den Berg

Reply to
Gerhard v d Berg

How about the AT91RM9200?

Host & Device, no OTG.

Ditto.

4 USART.

and over 100 I/O ports.

Reply to
linnix

look.

I agree - the following info might however be of use to other that have an embedded USB host requirement. It might however meet the 'minimal' requirement of some designs. The device seems to be new and possibly in short supply, but the suggested price looks attractive.

See short add at:

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Philips ARM7 MCU Packs Full-Speed USB 2.0 Interface Pricing is touted to start at $3.60

Gerhard van den Berg

Reply to
Gerhard v d Berg

Except for the typo, the LPC214x USB is a device, not a host...

--
A. P. Richelieu
Reply to
A. P. Richelieu

Thanks for pointing out that the LPC214x chips only provide 'USB Device' support. Sorry for those that were mislead in my enthuiasm in posting this hot bit 'misleading' news before checking it first :-(

Gerhard van den Berg

Reply to
Gerhard

You might check out the USBwiz-OEM.

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I had previously used a SL811HS connected to PIC for USB host support, but this board makes it so much easier, especially with the SDI and FAT support.

Software is still in beta, but it does what I need already.

Reply to
richard.ibbotson

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