Now I have RNDIS working on Windows (Linux a work-in-progress) I am back to thinking of the best way forward. If anyone has further thoughts on the following I'm very interested:
- FAT/MSD/USB. Still seems the easiest for the customers (think consumer, not necessarily tech-savvy), but FAT is non-journaled, is not good on flash and, anyway, doesn't work with my devices yet (I suspect bugs in the sector512 layer but put this on the back burner for now).
- MTP. No NuttX implementation, possibilities of doing it but probably hard work.
- RNDIS. Having got this working, it takes me back to "hacking" embedded devices in years gone by, with lots of messing around with net adapter settings, manual IP address, Telnet. Great for techies but not good for end users who want it to work out of the box.
For file systems I think I will go back to getting smartFS up and running and take a look at the journaling implementations and see if this can be added to the NuttX SmartFS legally.
Then I'm wondering of there's some kind of FAT-to-SmartFS virtual translation possible, so that USB MSD "sees" FAT but that is actually a translation layer to SmartFS. Very little experience of file systems but since this whole move to NuttX is baptism of fire, what the h€ll!
If RNDIS can be made user-friendly then that could still be a good path of course. And a solution for tech-savvy customers to do clever things :)
I see Linux has FUSE so that is way for Linux (and Mac) to read SmartFS if I understand it right but not, easily, on Windows that I can see
Bottom line - I would like to avoid the average user from needing to do anything difficult and, ideally, not have to rely on an app to get connectivity.
