ben-wpan software: first MAC-layer communication with ATBEN

Werner Almesberger werner at almesberger.net
Fri Apr 1 09:04:31 EDT 2011


Stefan Schmidt wrote:
> - RF chip connecting via SPI to a microcontroller
> - This controller bridges between SPI on the RF side and USB on the
>   host side

Yup.

> - The linux host drives the RF over USB. Are you using some "SPI
>   packaged in USB" for this or the serial protocol defined by the
>   linux-zigbee project?

The protocol is slightly above SPI: its primitives are currently the
six transfer types (register read/write, buffer read/write, and SRAM
read/write) supported by the AT86RF230/231.

The control transfers are listed here:
http://projects.qi-hardware.com/index.php/p/ben-wpan/source/tree/master/atusb/fw/include/atusb/ep0.h
(Needs a monospaced font to look right.)

This protocol will still evolve a bit: interrupts are currently
only polled, we may need some additional command for production
testing, and it probably also makes sense to combine some
sequences of operations, maybe even have automatic reception of
frames to a temporary buffer in the MCU.

> (- Controller flashing is done via DFU?)

Aye, with dfu-util :) As soon as I solve the USB reset issues.

> Did I get all the pieces correctly sorted out?

Yup, sounds good.

- Werner




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