Microcontroller USB Flash Drive Interface Design Simplified by Development Platform.GLASGOW, Scotland -- FTDI announces the availability of the DLP-VLOG, a development platform based on its Vinculum vinculum /vin·cu·lum/ (ving´ku-lum) pl. vin´cula [L.] a band or bandlike structure. vin´cula ten´dinum Universal Serial Bus See USB. (hardware, standard) Universal Serial Bus - (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. (USB) host controller IC. The platform, configured as a simple data logging application, is designed to read temperature, humidity and voltage data, and store it on the supplied 32MB USB flash drive See USB drive. . A Microchip microcontroller used together with the Vinculum IC serves to illustrate how to provide virtually unlimited data storage to a small microcontroller. The DLP-VLOG provides a complete reference design on which to base new Vinculum development as well as being a starting point for similar logging applications. Vinculum provides USB host capability to microcontroller-based products that previously did not have the hardware resources available. A wide range of consumer and industrial products, such as intelligent domestic appliances, meter readers and vending machines, can now incorporate USB connectivity. FTDI's Vinculum VNC1L-1A IC provides USB host interface and data transfer, and supports the most popular device classes of mass storage, printer and human interface descriptor (HID). HID class devices typically include keyboards and mice. When interfacing to flash drives, Vinculum manages the file allocation table (file system) File Allocation Table - (FAT) The component of an MS-DOS or Windows 95 file system which describes the files, directories, and free space on a hard disk or floppy disk. A disk is divided into partitions. (FAT) structure by using a straightforward command set. The device has 8- and 32-bit custom processor cores, dual DMA controllers, 64k embedded flash and 4k internal SRAM memory. Vinculum features two USB 2.0 low and full speed, host and slave ports, universal asynchronous Refers to events that are not synchronized, or coordinated, in time. The following are considered asynchronous operations. The interval between transmitting A and B is not the same as between B and C. The ability to initiate a transmission at either end. receiver transmitter (UART), serial peripheral interface (communications, hardware) Serial Peripheral Interface - (SPI) A serial interface in which a master device supplies clock pulses to exchanges data serially with a slave over two data wires (Master-Slave and Slave-Master). (SPI) and parallel first in first out (FIFO (First In First Out) A storage method that retrieves the item stored for the longest time. Contrast with LIFO. See traffic engineering methods. FIFO - first-in first-out ) interfaces. It also has a PS2 legacy keyboard and mouse interface, and up to 28 general-purpose input output (GPIO) pins are available depending on configuration. The DLP-VLOG development kit includes a C compiler, device programmer and debugger and C source code for the microcontroller. Two Windows utility programs assist in converting data to floating point values and setting up the real time clock. All documentation, source code and programs are provided on the supplied flash drive. The price for the DLP-VLOG from FTDI is $250.00. |
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