> You might want to add the "flash" functionality within the kernel
> driver
> itself, so you can get a bit tighter timing than relying on a
> userspace/kernelspace turn around to provide an accurate timing loop.

I was already considering this.  At this point we fork a process to
handle the
GPIO functionality for us, so we can get reasonable timing on being able
to
flash the LED.  Another process is worring about moving bytes.  This is
causing
lockups in the and stalls in the communications.  I've fixed the lockup
issue,
but I still am dealing with LED process stalling the two comms process. 
I was
definitely considering changing the code so that all the user app would
have to do
is set the GPIO mode to off, on, and blink, and the Kernel would do all
the dirty
work.

>
> That would be interesting to find out. In the past, the company that
> made this chip has been very unhelpful, going so far as to publish a
> driver that violated the GPL and my copyright :(
>

Yeah that sucks.  I talked to my manager (who did the first run at
modifying the
driver for GPIO support).  He said that he sniffed out the packet with a
usb
protocol sniffer.  He used the dev-kit and toggled the GPIOs to capture
the packet
with the sniffer.

After I complete the changes I'm going to make to the driver, I can
definitely forward
them on if people are interested in them.  I will likely need some
guidance on
coding standards and the like.

> There are lots of other good and documented chips that work very well
> with Linux that you might want to look into in the future for stuff
> like
> this (ftdi_sio is one, and there are others.)
>

Our hardware manager mentioned this today. That everyone has been giving
us
the gears for not using the ftdi part in the design.  The problem is
that their parts
aren't rated for industrial temperature range.  The cp210x family
however is. 
Hardware requirements were more important than software requirements on
that
front.  If I had my choice the cp210x parts would never be in any of our
products.

Andrew


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