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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : USB Host Implimentation

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panky

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Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1116
Posted: 07:44pm 09 Nov 2017
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Several boards for the Micromites have the physical Host USB interface included on board. Can anyone advise whether there are working examples of using these or, perhaps Geoff or Peter, are there plans to impliment Host USB functionality into MMBasic at some stage?

Thanks,
Doug.
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
CaptainBoing

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Joined: 07/09/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2171
Posted: 11:41pm 09 Nov 2017
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I posted a similar question a few months back and drew a blank. Host would be lovely wouldn't it? a world of USB drives, keyboards, mice etc just opens up!

In the meantime I use these for my USB keyboard interfaces where I can't get around it... bit "terminal-y" but it works fineEdited by CaptainBoing 2017-11-11
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 10565
Posted: 11:44pm 09 Nov 2017
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  Quote  a world of USB drives, keyboards, mice etc just opens up!


And this is the problem. Each one needs coding individually (lots of coding) and in the case of the three mentioned all are already supported in different tech (PS2 mouse only on MMX), PS2 keyboard, SDcard
 
panky

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Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1116
Posted: 01:05am 10 Nov 2017
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I understand Peter, my question was related to a idea to implement some sort of printer interface. As there are USB to Centronics adapters and I have an old Epson Centronics printer, I thought I may be able to some simple Esc2P codes out to the printer via USB.

Would it be feasible to have even basic (no pun intended 😀 ) usb enumeration and leave the actual "drivers" to be done as c functions. Please excuse me if I seem to making this appear simplistic - just curious as to why they are included on your boards and if you had something in mind.

Regards,
Doug.
... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!
 
Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 3308
Posted: 04:05am 10 Nov 2017
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I have a long term plan to support USB keyboards but that is as far as it goes. As Peter said, there are too many devices to support generally.

Geoff
Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net
 
MicroBlocks

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Joined: 12/05/2012
Location: Thailand
Posts: 2209
Posted: 05:57am 10 Nov 2017
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USB CDC and HID host would allow lots of things to be connected.
I have played with that before and it is not as easy as i hoped for.
It basically is a serial interface but with lots of overhead and structure. This allows automatic recognition, loading of drivers etc. If you just want to do simple stuff you will also need to do the complicated stuff unfortunately.
A PC has lots of capacity to do all that complicated stuff.
A microcontroller with USB host could be done but then you need to narrow it done to a few specific devices, otherwise it gets out of hand very quickly.
A keyboard/mouse would be great, then again with a touchscreen lots of that can be done anyway.

Microblocks. Build with logic.
 
Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 9749
Posted: 04:24pm 10 Nov 2017
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I will go so far as to say that USB printer support will NEVER happen. Forgetting the very valid point about their being so many different ones for the moment, USB printers are controlled from within a driver, and there is no way to install said driver under a Micromite - to say nothing of how hard that would be to code anyway.

Having said that, there are plenty of serial thermal printers available you can easily interface to the MM/MM+/MMX. Have a look at this thread where I hook up a $50 thermal printer to a MM.

CircuitGizmoes hooked up a parallel printer interface to drive a dot-matrix printer for basic text output using the PORT command and an I/O pin to pulse for the STROBE line. Dot-matrix is probably a bit too retro though.
Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!
 
CaptainBoing

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Joined: 07/09/2016
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 2171
Posted: 02:19am 11 Nov 2017
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  Grogster said   Dot-matrix is probably a bit too retro though.


HERESY!!!
 
kg4pid
Regular Member

Joined: 08/03/2015
Location: United States
Posts: 50
Posted: 04:53am 11 Nov 2017
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Bussiness still use dot matrix whenever a multi-part form is printed, so they are still around, but in declining numbers. I still use one because it is cheaper to use than laser, inkjet or thermal. I'm cheap, what can I say.

Max
 
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