Guidance for a first IIO sensor driver contribution

Guidance for a first IIO sensor driver contribution

[Olivier Tanoh]

Hi all,

I'm an embedded Linux engineer looking to contribute my first sensor
driver to IIO. I'm familiar with the submission process (I've had
patches merged to staging), and I've studied the structure of existing
IIO drivers, si7005.c in particular, so I'm comfortable with probe,
channel definitions and read_raw.

I have I2C hardware for testing (Raspberry Pi CM4), so I can buy a
part and validate on real hardware.

My difficulty is picking a target. Most of the simple
temperature/humidity sensors I looked at (SHT3x, AHT20, ...) already
have hwmon drivers, and the recent parts I found in vendor catalogs
(e.g. MAX30210) are already being submitted upstream.

Two questions:

Are there sensors the IIO community would like to see supported that
currently have no driver?
For a sensor that already has an hwmon driver, is an IIO driver
considered worthwhile (for buffer/trigger support), or is that
generally seen as redundant?

I'd rather pick something useful than duplicate existing work. Any
guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Olivier Tanoh

Re: Guidance for a first IIO sensor driver contribution

[Jonathan Cameron]

On Thu, 6 Aug 2026 16:14:05 +0200
Olivier Tanoh <olivier.tanoh19@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,

Hi Olivier,

Would have been better to reply to you earlier thread with the additional
context of the replies to that available to anyone seeing this message.

> 
> I'm an embedded Linux engineer looking to contribute my first sensor
> driver to IIO. I'm familiar with the submission process (I've had
> patches merged to staging), and I've studied the structure of existing
> IIO drivers, si7005.c in particular, so I'm comfortable with probe,
> channel definitions and read_raw.
> 
> I have I2C hardware for testing (Raspberry Pi CM4), so I can buy a
> part and validate on real hardware.
> 
> My difficulty is picking a target. Most of the simple
> temperature/humidity sensors I looked at (SHT3x, AHT20, ...) already
> have hwmon drivers, and the recent parts I found in vendor catalogs
> (e.g. MAX30210) are already being submitted upstream.
> 
No particular suggestions from me.

> Two questions:
> 
> Are there sensors the IIO community would like to see supported that
> currently have no driver?
> For a sensor that already has an hwmon driver, is an IIO driver
> considered worthwhile (for buffer/trigger support), or is that
> generally seen as redundant?

Very very rarely does it make sense to move a driver between subsystems
and it is painful to do.

Jonathan

> 
> I'd rather pick something useful than duplicate existing work. Any
> guidance would be appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Olivier Tanoh
>