[ Kristjan Komloši HomePC ]
90 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
90 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
# TinI/O manual
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# 1. Introduction to TinI/O
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## 1.1 What is TinI/O?
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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].
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## 1.2 What features does TinI/O have?
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- It can make any linux computer GPIO enabled
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- It runs as a standalone program that can be easily integrated into other programs via system() calls
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- It consumes almost none of the host computer's resources, because it never runs in the background
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- It's compatible with almost every Linux system that has USB, including the embedded and older ones
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- It operates over USB 1.1, which makes TinI/O compatible even with the oldest of USB-enabled computers
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## 1.3 How does it work?
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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.
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## 1.4 Under what license can it be used?
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TinI/O is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which is publicly available at <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> and in the COPYING file in the `docs` directory in the project's root.
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# 2. Installing
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## 2.1 What you should know
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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.
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TinI/O requires some quite basic system requirements, so before you proceed, make sure that you have:
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- a working C and C++ compiler (**a working C++ is a working C compiler, but not the other way round!**)
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- installed libusb
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- GNU Make and cmake
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## 2.2 Manual build
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_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._
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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:
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| **Target** | **Description** |
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| -----------| ----------------|
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| _default_ | The default target. Calls _utils_ and _tinio_ targets. |
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| _tinio_ | Builds main TinI/O program. |
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| _utils_ | Builds the flasher utility. |
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| _install_ | Installs TinI/O and the flasher utility to /usr/bin and the flash files to /usr/bin/tinio/flashes |
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### 2.2.1 Building the Library
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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.
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### 2.2.2 Building everything else
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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.
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## 2.1 The `autobuilder`
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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.
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The `autobuilder`-automated build process is simple. You just need to run the script, which will do a typical TinI/O instalation.
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# 3. After the installation
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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.
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## 3.1 Flashing the chips
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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:
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- `5-5_decoded.cyusbd`, that provides 5 input and 5 output ports
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- `3-3cs_decoded.cyusbd`, that provides 3 input and 3 output ports, plus a CapSense button with its dedicated input.
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## 3.2 A little more detail on the flash files
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The flash files that are included with TinI/O don't have a Linux-compatible editor and therefore can't be tweaked to fit one's needs ideally. However, this can be done in a Windows environment using a dedicated program from Cypress. With it you can modify the chip's configuration without being limited to the premade flash files. However, some USB-related settings are and **have to be** the same regardless of the use case to ensure compatibility with TinI/O program.
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Use case independent properties:
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| Max. Current drawn from USB | 350mA |
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## 3.3 Flashing with the `cy-config` utility
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[chip]: http://www.cypress.com/part/cy7c65211-24ltxi
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[cylib]: http://github.com/cyrozap/libcyusbserial
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