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Technically you can use the 50 pin header we have for the input system for GPIO, i2c, and USB. The webcam and display headers also have i2c and USB: https://gi

by nrp 5y ago

Technically you can use the 50 pin header we have for the input system for GPIO, i2c, and USB. The webcam and display headers also have i2c and USB: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/blob/main/Electrical/Pinouts.md https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/blob/main/Ele... The GPIO would require EC firmware development, but it is technically possible: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

geokon 5y ago
Is this on the ribbon cable? Okay with a breakout board, this would be really interesting and offer something quite unique It's actually open space right now in the market. It's an annoyance/limitation that the easiest current way to do i2c/gpio/etc hardware-y stuff involves moving to ARM/Rpi. There aren't any real easy solutions for x86 and hobbyists. I had a friend who worked in touchdesigner (which is x64 only) and it was always a bit annoying he couldn't hook say LED strips directly to his laptop and to touchdesigner (so people spend a small fortune on DMX lights). We ended up doing wifi + esps. But that's much more fragile.. Maybe ideally you'd have a header on the side of laptop kinda like the Rpi400? But even a separate machine/baseboard would still be awesome in the hobby and education sphere
- MegiFlayer 5y ago
  - MegiFlayer 5y ago
- ezschemi 5y ago
  We recently built a product that utilizes FTDI chips for i2c/gpio/jtag/spi/swd-protocol support. My dev kits and bench setup uses the Adafruit FTDI breakout boards (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264) to connect to various other circuitry. The driver and even the communication protocols are documented and open source (e.g. OpenOCD implemented their own based on the USB packets). The breakout board doesn't have 40-50 GPIO pins an RPI has, but you can hook multiple of these breakout boards to a computer. I am using 4 breakout boards with one ARM SBC each as targets, with no problems on an Intel NUC. And they are much smaller and easier to get than a RPi. Besides the FT232H, there are larger FTDI chips with more channels. I am uncertain if one can find USB breakout boards for them, though.
  - geokon 5y ago
    oh that's really cool. What's the driver situation with something like that? On Linux do I just write to some file and it's mapped to some hardware pins? Or it's more complicated than that?

by nrp 5y ago

geokon 5y ago

Is this on the ribbon cable? Okay with a breakout board, this would be really interesting and offer something quite unique It's actually open space right now in the market. It's an annoyance/limitation that the easiest current way to do i2c/gpio/etc hardware-y stuff involves moving to ARM/Rpi. There aren't any real easy solutions for x86 and hobbyists. I had a friend who worked in touchdesigner (which is x64 only) and it was always a bit annoying he couldn't hook say LED strips directly to his laptop and to touchdesigner (so people spend a small fortune on DMX lights). We ended up doing wifi + esps. But that's much more fragile.. Maybe ideally you'd have a header on the side of laptop kinda like the Rpi400? But even a separate machine/baseboard would still be awesome in the hobby and education sphere

MegiFlayer 5y ago
- MegiFlayer 5y ago
ezschemi 5y ago
We recently built a product that utilizes FTDI chips for i2c/gpio/jtag/spi/swd-protocol support. My dev kits and bench setup uses the Adafruit FTDI breakout boards (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264) to connect to various other circuitry. The driver and even the communication protocols are documented and open source (e.g. OpenOCD implemented their own based on the USB packets). The breakout board doesn't have 40-50 GPIO pins an RPI has, but you can hook multiple of these breakout boards to a computer. I am using 4 breakout boards with one ARM SBC each as targets, with no problems on an Intel NUC. And they are much smaller and easier to get than a RPi. Besides the FT232H, there are larger FTDI chips with more channels. I am uncertain if one can find USB breakout boards for them, though.
- geokon 5y ago
  oh that's really cool. What's the driver situation with something like that? On Linux do I just write to some file and it's mapped to some hardware pins? Or it's more complicated than that?