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Andy Green wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:48EA1081.9040804@openmoko.com" type="cite">
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Michael Tansella wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Hi,
we want to create an additional Board which includes some sensors bundled with
a Microcontroller. What do you think is the easiest way to connect it with
the Openmoko. Can we use an UART Port, if yes, what's the best way to get
access to it?
AFAIK we have 3 UART Ports available. One is used for GSM Modem one for GPS
and one for Console.
I don't understand what's the third one (Console) for. Can we use it for our
project?
Do you recommend another possibility? SPI?Are there any free ports which are
supposed to be used for hardware extensions?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Debug console sets information from bootloader and linux dumped down it
on boot, and you can log in there as well. If you stop the tty process
spawning in inittab, after boot you'd be able to use it.
There is an SPI interface on the testpoints near the debug connector.
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<pre wrap="">We would like to avoid using USB because of its complexity.
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote cite="mid:48EA1081.9040804@openmoko.com" type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><!---->
USB is definitely the best solution if you can get over the hump of
getting started with a programmable device for it. Everything else
means the phone is tethered permanently to your other board.
</pre>
</blockquote>
USB is actually a lot easier than you can be led to believe, as there
are a number of existing demo/breakout USB boards designed just for
this type of application. My favourite are the Phidgets, as they offer
not only a range of boards with digital/analog input/outputs, but
they'll also work with you to do custom designs/projects and offer a
wide range of other types of sensors/etc that you can utilize along
with them. They also offer the best software support I've seen for this
kind of hardware by supplying development tools and libraries for
virtually every programming language under the sun. I don't have an
OpenMoko device to play with right now but I've cross-compiled their
demo apps (along with my own basic C apps based on their libraries) to
various ARM platforms, so shouldn't be a problem from that end either.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
-Rob Williams<br>
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