Welcome to the TinI/O Manual!

Welcome to the TinI/O manual. In this document you can find information about installing, configuring and using TinI/O, the simple interface to I/O.

What is TinI/O?

Simply put, TinI/O is a Linux CLI program that, when combined with a certain chip, adds more general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins to your computer. They can then be used to control custom electronics outside the computer, for example a MOSFET driving a fan, a LED, a sensor or anything that can be controlled or read from with logic ones and zeros. That certain chip is in this case, the Cypress CY7C65211 USB-Serial Bridge Controller. TinI/O sends commands to it over USB using the libcyusbserial library made by cyrozap and the libusb library. When the chip recieves the command, it changes or reads the state of the requested GPIO pin.

Using TinI/O is free (as beer and speech), because it's licensed under GNU General Public License. You can use it free of any charges, but you need a TinI/O compatible board (like this one), that (at the time of writing) costs $4 at Cypress.com.

Where to start?

To start using TinI/O, make sure you have:

A computer running some sort of Linux that has:
- A free USB port to use the board with
- installed libusb
- 16 MB of free space (or 8 for the bare minimum)
- A C and C++ compiler (preferably gcc and g++)
A TinI/O compatible board

They can be obtained from Cypress, the manufacturer of the chip. The board I personally use and recommend is the CY8CKIT-049-4xxx PSoC4 prototyping kit, but there are more of them out there, for example, the CYUSBS234 USB-Serial (Single Channel) Development Kit, which uses the same chip, or the CYUSB232 USB-UART LP Reference Design Kit and the CYUSBS236 USB-Serial (Dual Channel) Development Kit, that have different chips from the same family.

Building and installing TinI/O

The easy way

After you make sure that your computer complies with the system requirements (it probably does), you need to build and install TinI/O. The simplest way to do that is to run the autobuilder script in the project root (aka the folder you downloaded TinI/O source to) as root. The script will then start the build process and redirect any text from its underlying programs to the standard output. A typical output from a succesful installation looks approximately like this:

Long text - Click to expand

Autobuilder for TinI/O 0.1 Verifying main directory... DONE! Entering the library directory... DONE! Compiling and installing the library... -- The C compiler identification is GNU 6.3.0 -- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works -- Detecting C compiler ABI info -- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done -- Detecting C compile features -- Detecting C compile features - done -- Found PkgConfig: /usr/bin/pkg-config (found version "0.29") -- Checking libusb version... -- libusb version: 1.0.9 -- Looking for pthread.h -- Looking for pthread.h - found -- Looking for pthread_create -- Looking for pthread_create - not found -- Looking for pthread_create in pthreads -- Looking for pthread_create in pthreads - not found -- Looking for pthread_create in pthread -- Looking for pthread_create in pthread - found -- Found Threads: TRUE CMake Warning at lib/CMakeLists.txt:86 (message): libusb >= 1.0.16 is HIGHLY recommended. If you experience issues or poor performance, please try updating libusb. Detected version: 1.0.9

-- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: /root/projekti/CyUSB/cylib/build Scanning dependencies of target cyusbserial [ 10%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyusb.c.o [ 20%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyuart.c.o [ 30%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyi2c.c.o [ 40%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyspi.c.o [ 50%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyphdc.c.o [ 60%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyjtag.c.o [ 70%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cymisc.c.o [ 80%] Linking C shared library libcyusbserial.so [ 80%] Built target cyusbserial Scanning dependencies of target cyusbserialtest [ 90%] Building C object tools/CMakeFiles/cyusbserialtest.dir/cyusbserialtest.c.o [100%] Linking C executable cyusbserialtest [100%] Built target cyusbserialtest [ 80%] Built target cyusbserial [100%] Built target cyusbserialtest Install the project... -- Install configuration: "" -- Installing: /usr/local/include/CyUSBSerial.h -- Installing: /usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so.1 -- Installing: /usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so -- Set runtime path of "/usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so.1" to "" -- Installing: /usr/local/bin/cyusbserialtest -- Set runtime path of "/usr/local/bin/cyusbserialtest" to "" DONE! Library installation complete. Going back... DONE! Entering the TinI/O build directory DONE!

If a part of the installation process fails, the script will abort the installation and print out: Error! The last action autobuild tried to perform failed. In such case, try also the manual installation described below. If your installation completes succesfully, proceed to the next chapter.

The hard way

In case the automated installation fails, or if you specifically want to build TinI/O manually, you can build TinI/O with a GNU Makefile and the library for it with CMake. The order of installation is important: the library must be built before TinI/O, because TinI/O needs the library to be built. To build the library, go to the cylib/build directory and run cmake .. folowed by make and make install as root. The output should look similiar to this:

# cd cylib/build
# cmake ..
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 6.4.0
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Found PkgConfig: /usr/bin/pkg-config (found version "0.29")
-- Checking libusb version...
-- libusb version: 1.0.9

-- Looking for pthread.h
-- Looking for pthread.h - found
-- Looking for pthread_create
-- Looking for pthread_create - not found
-- Looking for pthread_create in pthreads
-- Looking for pthread_create in pthreads - not found
-- Looking for pthread_create in pthread
-- Looking for pthread_create in pthread - found
-- Found Threads: TRUE
CMake Warning at lib/CMakeLists.txt:86 (message):


 libusb >= 1.0.16 is HIGHLY recommended.  If you experience issues or poor
 performance, please try updating libusb.

 Detected version: 1.0.9



-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /root/projekti/CyUSB/cylib/build
# make
Scanning dependencies of target cyusbserial
[ 10%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyusb.c.o
[ 20%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyuart.c.o
[ 30%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyi2c.c.o
[ 40%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyspi.c.o
[ 50%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyphdc.c.o
[ 60%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cyjtag.c.o
[ 70%] Building C object lib/CMakeFiles/cyusbserial.dir/cymisc.c.o
[ 80%] Linking C shared library libcyusbserial.so
[ 80%] Built target cyusbserial
Scanning dependencies of target cyusbserialtest
[ 90%] Building C object tools/CMakeFiles/cyusbserialtest.dir/cyusbserialtest.c.o
[100%] Linking C executable cyusbserialtest
[100%] Built target cyusbserialtest
# make install
[ 80%] Built target cyusbserial
[100%] Built target cyusbserialtest
Install the project...
-- Install configuration: ""
-- Up-to-date: /usr/local/include/CyUSBSerial.h
-- Installing: /usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so.1
-- Up-to-date: /usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so
-- Set runtime path of "/usr/local/lib/libcyusbserial.so.1" to ""
-- Installing: /usr/local/bin/cyusbserialtest
-- Set runtime path of "/usr/local/bin/cyusbserialtest" to ""

After the succesful library installation, go to the tinio directory in the package root and run make and make install as root. The output should look similar to this:

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