# TinI/O manual -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 1\. Introduction to TinI/O ## 1.1 What is TinI/O? TinI/O (or tinio) is a program that makes Linux computers with USB GPIO-capable and expands the existing capabilities on GPIO-enabled computers. It does that with its hardware counterpart, [the Cypress CY7C65211 USB-Serial chip][chip]. ## 1.2 What features does TinI/O have? - It can make any linux computer GPIO enabled - It runs as a standalone program that can be easily integrated into other programs via system() calls - It consumes almost none of the host computer's resources, because it never runs in the background - It's compatible with almost every Linux system that has USB, including the embedded and older ones - It operates over USB 1.1 that make TinI/O compatible even with the oldest of USB-enabled computers ## 1.3 How does it work? TinI/O can't provide GPIO by itself. Its capabilites rely on its chip companion ([CY7C65211][chip]), libusb and cyrozap's libcyusbserial library. When TinI/O is ran, it processes its arguments and sends commands to the chip via the before mentioned libraries. The chip then changes its GPIO pins' states accordingly. ## 1.4 Under what license can it be used? TinI/O is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which is publicly available at [] and in the COPYING file in the `docs` directory in the project's root. # 2\. Installing ## 2.1 What you should know TinI/O binaries aren't available yet, but that isn't a problem, because TinI/O is very easy to build, even for people not familiar with program building procedures. TinI/O requires some quite basic system requirements, so before you proceed, make sure that you have: - a working C and C++ compiler (**a working C++ is a working C compiler, but not the other way round!**) - installed libusb - GNU Make and cmake ## 2.2 Manual build _This chapter explains how to build TinI/O manually. If you don't feel comfortable or don't want to build it manually, skip this chapter._ The TinI/O build process is pretty common. It's automated with a makefile, common to most *nix build processes. It has 4 build targets: | **Target** | **Description** | |:----------:|:----------------| | _default_ | The default target. Calls _utils_ and _tinio_ | ### 2.2.1 Building the Library To communicate with the chip, TinI/O needs [a dedicated library written by cyrozap][cylib] that comes with TinI/O but needs to be built separately. To do that, run `cmake .. && make && sudo make install` inside the `cylib/build` directory in the project root. ### 2.2.2 Building everything else To complete the installation process, run `make && make install` in the `tinio` directory in the project root. That will build and install the flasher utility and TinI/O itself. ## 2.1 The `autobuilder` Because some people don't like manual binary building, TinI/O comes with the `autobuilder` shell script, which allows non-experienced users to install TinI/O without knowing much about GNU Make, GCC and other tools that are used to build it. It's very minimalistic: the only thing it does is following the manual build process described in the previous chapter and checks forany errors at the end of each step. The `autobuilder`-automated build process is simple. You just need to run the script, which will do a typical TinI/O instalation. # 3\. After the installation After the installation of TinI/O, you actually don't need to do anything at all with _it_. The next step is to prepare the actual device you'll be using TinI/O with. ## 3.1 Flashing the chips Cypress CY7C65211 can be flashed only from Windows with a dedicated Cypress utility due to its unique flash file format. Fortunately, after some bargaining with Cypress I got a Linux utility that is licensed under LGPL and free (as speech _and_ beer). It can flash special, decoded versions of flash files that can be produced with a special Windows decoder executable that I can't provide with TinI/O because it's not GPL'd (actually it's not even licensed!) and isn't released to the public (yet). Instead the TinI/O package includes 2 already decoded flash files that should satisfy the needs of a typical user. Their names are: - `5-5_decoded.cyusbd`, that provides 5 input and 5 output ports - `3-3cs_decoded.cyusbd`, that provides 3 input and 3 output ports, plus a CapSense button with its dedicated input. ## 3.2 A little more detail on the flash files _Here is a detailed description of the flash files configurations for the curious and other developers. It contains a lot of technical details, that aren't particularly useful in a typical TinI/O use case. A stripped-down version of the table below can be found at the end of the previous chapter "3.1 Flashing the chips"_ TODO Make a big ol' able with them config's ## 3.3 Flashing with the `cy-config` utility [chip]: http://www.cypress.com/part/cy7c65211-24ltxi [cylib]: http://github.com/cyrozap/libcyusbserial