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[ts-7000] Re: Scheduled activity on a TS-7800

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Subject: [ts-7000] Re: Scheduled activity on a TS-7800
From: "charliem_1216" <>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:53:20 -0000
Hi --

--- In  Alexander Clouter <> wrote:
> 
> As a author who definitely understands nothing and its just
tinkering to 
> have fun... :)
> 
> [snip]
> > 
> I'm now starting to look at how best to deal with the ADC/AVR
McWhatsit and 
> how to present this to the user; mainly as it's the next most
interesting 
> thing to add support for next.

Most full-blown A/D cards in linux have drivers that conform to the
comedi interface, but that may be a little over-engineered for an
embedded system with only an A/D, no gain settings, etc.  But it may
be worth a look, if only to get interface ideas:
http://www.comedi.org/

This topic (where to place increasingly common non-sensor A/D) has
recently come up on LKML too.  May be worth a look for future direction:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=121127840626414&w=2
See especially here, regarding the work already done by the
handhelds.org guys on this:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=121190685900869&w=2
 
Finally, take a look at Phil's MAX197 driver for some interface ideas
(in the file area of the group).

> I'm definitely going to make it a kernel land driver that lets you
set the   
> channels you wish to sample via sysfs (/sys) and then when you say
"record" 
> it will spit out from some /dev device the sampled data.
> 
> Hopefully all you will need to do is write a few values to /sys to
say what 
> it is you want to sample, tell the kernel "go" and then start
reading in the 
> data with a select() loop on the /dev device.
> 
> Is this an okay interface for you guys?  I trying to figure out how
best to 
> deal with the following problems:
>  * userland tool might prefer to mmap() and be 'poked' when there is
data

Userland tool will use whatever method your driver does, if he wants data!

>  * I was thinking that we might want some DMA support, then we are only 
>       dealing with 2000 16bit samples a second, so probably not to bother?

I agree, at least not at first.

>  * when you turn off the 'record' flag the /dev input will finish
gracefully 
>       with the last batch(es) of data followed by an EOF or something
>  * what to do if the user does not pull the data fast enough. 
Should I dump 
>       the data to get lost in the ether, store in a buffer in kernel land 
>       until the user gets around to their job (how large should I let the
>       buffer grow?).  Again as we are not talking about a lot of data we
>       could probably happily store ten seconds worth of sampling and still 
>       sit less than 64kiB?

Circular buffer, size set by module load parameter?

>  * any failure conditions I cannot think of
>  * as I do not use this type of functionality I have no idea how
people like 
>       to use this type of thing
>  * should I be interweaving the /dev stream with timestamps when the
samples 
>       were taken?

Depends ... Is there any support for other sampling rates with this HW?

Regards, ....... Charlie

> 
> Suggestions welcome.  From my perspective having the kernel deal
with all 
> this (including the reblating of the FPGA memory with 0xffffffff) is a
> Good Thing(tm).
> 
> Again the disadvantage of using my code, no SD card support.  You
could call 
> upon a USB key though to store data or some data storage logger that
lives 
> off a serial port...
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Alex
> 
> [1] <smugness>
http://git.eu.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/nico/orion.git;a=commit;h=7171d8672bb0bcb744935bd2c6108378b5c6c6ad
</smugness>
> 
> -- 
>  ______________________________________
> / He who makes a beast of himself gets \
> | rid of the pain of being a man.      |
> |                                      |
> \ -- Dr. Johnson                       /
>  --------------------------------------
>         \   ^__^
>          \  (oo)\_______
>             (__)\       )\/\
>                 ||----w |
>                 ||     ||
>



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