[Elecraft] RE: K2 with USB anytime soon??

[Bob Cunnings]

Right on. That's how USB connectivity was incorporated into our latest
product line. The FTDI part interfaces with a UART on the
microcontroller on one side, and a normal USB host port on the PC.
FTDI furnishes a USB driver and an application level DLL which our PC
hosted control software calls into to move data into and out of the
interface. We bit the bullet and signed on with the USB consortium to
get our own Vendor Id number. The hardest part is figuring out how to
manage the EEPROM holding the USB device descriptor and checksum, so
as to give the FTDI part it's new identity (documentation was
sketchy). Also the distribution of the driver, application DLL, and
.inf file had to be worked out, as was the management of USB serial
numbers in mfg. But really no big deal, the investment in the serial
protocol is preserved, and no USB driver needs to be written from
scratch.

Anyway, the FTDI part makes tunnelling an existing serial protocol
through the USB port easy and our customers are happy since they can
use USB natively on their new laptops without RS232 ports. They hate
converters since the use case is temporary setups in the field for
maintenance and diagnostics - they want a minimum of cables and
whatnot to lug around and fuss with.

Bob NW8L

On 6/18/06, Hisashi T Fujinaka <htodd at twofifty.com> wrote:
> Most small-volume projects I've seen just use the FTDI USB to serial
> interface. Basically it moves the USB-to-serial interface into the
> project.
>
> Not real sure if it's hard to use, but check out the WinKey USB to see
> an example. I also have a PIC programmer that uses the same chip. The
> serial works on my Mac and my PC.
>
> In other words, I don't think it's that big a deal.
>
> --
> Hisashi T Fujinaka - htodd at twofifty.com
> BSEE(6/86) + BSChem(3/95) + BAEnglish(8/95) + MSCS(8/03) + $2.50 = latte
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