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Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit

Added by Mattias Ekstrom over 12 years ago

Hi, I'm wondering what the best way to get an additional serial port is? Is there support for usb-to-serial adapters?

I'm developing something that will need to have both serial, profibus and ethernet support for data transfer and with the standard serial port dedicated to terminal use I don't know what my best options are.

Best regards, Mattias


Replies (7)

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Michael Williamson over 12 years ago

Hi Mattias,

I think that your best (or easiest) bet would be to use a usb-to-serial adapter on the Host (USB1) port. If you need more than one, you should be able to use a (powered) hub and attach multiple units. We have used Keyspan's USB adaptors successfully with this hardware and a properly configured kernel.

Other options:

- If you are using an FPGA based module, you could insert a UART core and pin out the UART to the expansion connectors, but that would require cobbing up a level translator circuit and DB-9 plug.

- If you aren't using an FPGA based module, I believe that it may be possible to use a PRU and create another serial port using OMAP-L138 GPIO pins, but we've not tried that here. You might check with TI about how to do that. You'll still need external level translators for this approach as well.

-Mike

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Mattias Ekstrom over 12 years ago

Thanks for the speedy reply!

One extra port should suffice. I'll order one of the keyspan adapters right away.

I'm using the MityDSP-L138 SoM. Can you point me in the right direction for properly configuring the kernel?
I guess it's mostly loading the right modules? I'm using a serial-to-usb adapter with ubuntu VM you provided, but as it
auto-configured everything I've not gotten an oppurtunity to set it up myself yet.

It's running the default kernel at the moment.

Best regard, Mattias

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Mattias Ekstrom over 12 years ago

Hmm, I don't really need a physical port. Is there any com over ethernet software availible for these systems?

/ Mattias

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Michael Williamson over 12 years ago

The default kernel and root filesystem may "just work". If you plug in the device you should see some messages about it and the device should appear as /dev/ttyUSB0. If that doesn't happen, then you'll need to run make menuconfig and add:

Drivers->USB Support->USB Serial Converter support->XXXX

Where XXXX is the model of the device you are using. We normally build this stuff directly in (not as a module) for embedded kernels, but that is are your discretion.

Load up your new kernel and I think you should be off and running.

-Mike

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Michael Williamson over 12 years ago

(re: comm over ethernet)

Is ssh acceptable? "ssh root@mitydspaddr"

-Mike

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Mattias Ekstrom over 12 years ago

No, I don't think ssh would work. It has to be something I could open and interact with just like a com port from my code, I'm not sure you can do that with ssh? Either way the recieving end is a windows box and it seems unlikely there would be any software for it on windows. But on the other hand I'm rather new to this so what do I know?! :D

I'll just go with the serial-to-usb adapter, it seems like the obvious solution and they're pretty cheap anyway.

Thanks for all the help!

RE: Additional serial port on the MityDSP Profibus dev-kit - Added by Mattias Ekstrom over 12 years ago

Just thought I'd add a note in case some one else stumbles upon this thread:

Ended up using a Prolific usb-to-serial device that was laying around the office.
I had to build a new kernel with support for usb-to-serial devices and this device
in particular, everything worked nicely as expected and all I had to do was to
reconfigure the kernel in the VM that comes with the board. And load it onto the
board of course.

/ Mattias

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