Control of sd-card pins in Linux - c++

Is it possible to control SD card reader register pins from Linux via C/C++ ? I have seen people doing it for pcmcia. But never with sd.

Use lspci to list the devices on your motherboard. From that you can find the hardware driver. If it doesn't already have the capability, you can add ioctl calls to the driver to read and write registers.

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How to find what device is connected to USB port (HID or Disk drive) in C++

I have managed to enumerate all the connected USB ports using SetupDi calls. Sample code is available at this link.
Please could any one tell me how can I find what device is connected to USB port like whether it is any HID device or any Disk drive?
Thanks.
I would recommend looking at the USBView sample in the WDK. If you are unfamiliar with this, simply run it - this tool walks the entire USB tree on the system and prints out information and descriptor listings for each device.
In your case, I'd start at the RefreshTree() function in this sample, you can then follow the code to see how it enumerates the host controllers, hubs and finally devices. For each device that you find you can look at the bInterfaceClass in the interface descriptors to find out what types of interfaces it is advertising (in your case 0x03 for HID Interface Class and 0x08 for Mass Storage Class).
The easiest way to get the source to this sample is to install the 7.1.0 WDK which is currently available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11800

Send zeroes and ones to the USB data pins?

Am trying to figure how can I make some software and USB hardware.
Let's put the hardware thing aside for now. For software, how can I send data to a USB port?
C++ / Java or any other language (prefer to be working on Linux).
USB ports are not like "dumb" RS-232 serial ports. It's a bus, that requires quite complicated handling, all driven by the host (the computer, typically). Very low-level operations such as "sending ones and zeros" to the data pins are more or less impossible.
The easiest way to program USB from user-space in Linux is probably to use libusb.
On the client (your custom USB hardware) end, either look for a system featuring a built-in USB controller, or a software stack. I don't think writing your own software stack is feasible, since you (no offense) don't seem to be quite at that level regarding your knowledge of USB.
V-USB is a software USB stack for Atmel's AVR microcontrollers, for instance.
As others have pointed out you have to write a driver for the USB device.
Another option is to communicate with the device using a serial protocol over USB, then your hardware needs an USB to serial chip. The best answer regarding USB over serial is in the question How to get C++ to perform I/O from a USB Port like a Serial Port by Mike DeSimone
If you want to bitbang I/O using USB, then you can connect a FTDI chip like the FT232 (which is used in many USB to serial cables) to the USB port.
On the PC you can use libFTDI to bitbang the I/O pins of the FTDI chip.
I think this is the easiest way for controlling I/O pins using USB.
An alternative to serial port emulation is USB HID (Human Input Device), which is supported on Linux out of the box. You'd use the "HIDAPI" to communicate with your device.
A usb port is just a serial port. Therefore, the first place that you want to look is writing a sofware to handle serial port communication.
Be aware that the OS may assign a different port number to the device whenever it's connected.

Access USB hardware (pressure sensor matrix with native C++ API) using Python

I am working with a pressure-sensing mattress having a USB interface. The maker provides USB device drivers for Windows, and an API written in C++ which has functions to request data and set some parameters.
Currently, I cannot use this sensor for testing some Python data-visualization scripts directly, having had to ask my coworkers to write a text-logger for me, and then I read this information offline with Python.
Also, I cannot use Linux at all with the sensor, because there are not drivers for Linux, and I do not know where to start to "hack" the sensor, and that is why I am asking:
"If I were to try to read data from this sensor directly with Python and perhaps in Linux, what should I do first, or read first?"
EDIT: the device has an FTDI driver (FTD2XX.dll) if it helps.
Any help would be very welcome
Odds are fairly good it's a HID device, in which case you can probably start to write a userspace linux driver for it using libhid. First place to start with that would be enumerating the tree that gives you information about its capabilities. (lsusb -vvv or Example)
Failing that you can use libusb on linux (and other platforms too these days) to write a userspace driver still. You'll want to use something like usbsnoop or a real hardware equivalent to see what the official driver does when it's talking to the device and mimic it from there.
From the python side you can probably generate a decent wrapper to the existing C++ API using SWIG for relatively little effort, especially compared to developing an entirely custom driver.
Update:
If it's an FTDI device then it's might be a lot simpler to work with. Depending on what the vendor and product ID are showing it might automatically work with the FTDI driver in Linux, giving you as USB serial port. Failing that there are parameters to the module - vendor and product that I believe you can use to make it claim other devices besides the pid/vid combinations it knows about already. From there you can try opening the serial port device with different settings. With luck it might be sending state info regularly already.
If it's not you want to try and discover what the official software sends to make it start playing. You're back into the realm of sniffing again, but I think there might well be things that do it at the serial layer instead of the USB layer for windows (although I can't name any). You might also learn something by trying to make their library use a software emulated serial port instead of the FTDI device and seeing what it writes.
The FTDI chips have a linux driver. Just go to the FTDI website and download it. The driver creates a virtual serial port. You can use PySerial to interface with it.
Too bad I didn't see the post sooner!

C++ USB Programming

I am new to hardware programming(especially USB) so please bear with me and my questions. I am using C++ and I need to send/receive some data (a byte array) to/from a USB port on a microprocessor board.
Now, I have done some serial port programming before and I know that for a serial port you have to open a port, setup, perform i/o and finally close the port. I am guessing to use a USB port, it is not as simple as what I mentioned above.
I do know that I want to use Microsoft standard drivers and implement standard Windows IO commands to accomplish this, since I believe there are no drivers for the microprocessor board for me to interact with.
If somebody can point me in the right direction as to the steps needed to "talk" to a USB port (open, setup, i/o) via standard Windows IO commands, I would truly and greatly appreciate it. Thanks you so much!!
USB in a nutshell is excellent background reading.
For a generic USB module try LibUSB which includes some examples of talking to standard devices. LibUSB-Win32 is the windows port of that library.
You're right though, it's nowhere near as simple as an RS232 port.
What microprocessor are you using? Does it come with any USB hardware or are you thinking of trying to implement it all in software (not something I'd recommend even contemplating!). A lot of microprocessors come with code samples which can emulate simple HID USB devices like keyboards / mice etc. which you can use as a starting point. Failing that, there's probably a few off-the-shelf options which will save you a lot of headaches :-)
Find out the USB chipset used on the microprocessor board, e.g. Ftdi, Cypress, etc. These manufacturers supply drivers, libraries and example programs for the comms, this is the easiest way.
There are no 'standard' drivers as such unless your board is set up as an HID device, however if you are using Windows, Microsoft supply a WinUSB.sys 'generic' driver which may or may not meet your needs (it doesn't support Isochronous transfers).
Should you write a driver for the USB device that will attach itself. If you know the type of chip that has the USB i/o on the board, the driver will be for that device.
There may already be driver's for that chip if it is an STM or there may be an API to help develop drivers for it. It would probably be a custom device but you should look through device types to see if there is an existing type that matches your device. If so there may also be a driver already for it which you can use. Information about the board is necessary.
WRITE YOUR OWN DRIVER
With out getting too far into it, you should learn Microsoft's driver model, the difference between user mode and kernal mode drivers, what driver node's represent, driver hierarchy and how they logically attach themselves, different types of drivers (filter, function, bus), how kernal driver's communicate with user interface, dynamic link libraries, frameworks and API's, WDM framework/API, KMDF and UMDF API's and this is just a short list.
OR you can use an existing driver.
USE USB MICROCONTROLLER SUPPLIED DRIVER
We do not know what firmware the USB microcontroller is using, if any. If there is no firmware (if say the chip came with out it or relies on eprom to store it and not flash) then if we knew if the chip supports usb bootloader, you can flash it or load it's firmware through the USB and there is no need for JTAG or other peripherials. Likely the usb alone is capable of getting you off the ground and anywhere from there. Typically these types of questions arise when considering board's with out a USB microcontroller.
Here is a link to a slighly related driver. Most USB microcontrollers serve the purpose of switching USB communication to UART as most microconrollers that actually do the thinking and control everything are not equiped with USB i/o but instead UART or some other i/o pins like I2C or SPI etc..
https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBXpress.aspx
That driver may actually work, if not something similar but for the manufacturer of your USB microcontroller; will almost certainly do the job. Hope this helps.
By hardware programming, do you mean you will be programming the microcontroller? If so, there is no way you will use "standard windows drivers" or anything like that.
The USB standard is very thick. Check it out here
It is a very involved topic and I recommend finding USB implementations already created for your microcontroller. (which we may be able to find if you gave us more info)
What kind of microprocessor and what kind of board?
Many processors come with support for USB ports. Also, some hardware boards come with USB contollers too.
For example, the processor that my shop is using comes with two USB controllers that can act as a hub or as a device. We're even adding another processor to act as a USB controller.

Data transmission through USB

I want to develop code to transmit data from system to PIC through USB.
Can anybody give good link regarding data transmission through USB.
because i am new to this.
NOTE: Very simple is code is enough to me.
Thanks in Advance
The PIC16F877 does not have a USB peripheral built in. I assume that the product that you are building is a "USB Device" and that the "system" that you are referring to will provide the USB host functionality. If this is the case then you will have to add a USB interface chip to your hardware to provide async serial to USB connectivity. Suitable devices are made by TI (TUSB series) or FTDI. You then connect one of these to the PIC internal USART and pretend that you are transferring the data over a simple serial port. If you are using a pc then the connected device will appear as a standard COMn: port.
I totally agree with the FTDI route, however if you're not looking for a UART tunnel over USB then you have to get a bit more in-depth.
You'll have to write the USB routines yourself or find libraries/projects for your processor. What you will definitely have to have is a fast clock - 12MHz is necessary More is better because on small uC's like these you'll spend most of your time just handling the basics of USB - signaling and so forth. You'll also need a fair bit of memory because the USB code takes up around 1.5K I think. Then you need room afterwards for your own code.
I've seen the V-USB (http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.html). It's for AVR not PIC, but it says it provides all of the USB functionality you'll need and even provides vendor and product IDs for you to use (non-commercial I believe). There's also a PIC project for USB that doesn't run on the same hardware as yours here: http://www.alanmacek.com/usb/
To make the driver you'll have to use libusb - here's a link for the win32 version: http://libusb-win32.sourceforge.net/
It's surprisingly more simple than I had expected, but I just looked at example code and not actually made anything. Good luck!
As your task will involve Windows Device Driver development, I do recommend to downlaod and install the WDK and look through the contained sample USB drivers.
This might get you some hints about the complexity of the topic. Device driver development is not the easiest thing to start with.
Maybe you can start with UART communication (RS232).
check http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/pic16f876.gif will surely help u
also
ttp://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb7.htm , type h in front of 2nd link.