Hardware prerequisites for driver development

Hardware prerequisites for driver development

[Rohit Sarkar]

Hi,
This is probably a real rookie question.
I have been interested in contributing to the driver subsystems such as
iio. I have submitted some minor patches but nothing substantial.
I feel that I need some hardware to be able to contribute more.
What hardware would I need to get started?
Where would I get this from?

Thanks,
Rohit

Re: Hardware prerequisites for driver development

[Crt Mori]

Hi Rohit,
There are many companies for hobbyists which sell sensors included in
IIO subsystem and for sure some electronic component store in your
local area. Price of sensor can be from 0.10 USD to 10 USD. Then you
plug this sensor to your Linux board (Beaglebone Black is Linux
Foundation preferred, although there are others including Raspberry PI
- can even be RPI Zero if you are on a budget, Odroid, Linaro, ...)
and you will need to provide correct voltage/current for the sensor.
Easiests is that you pick sensors which are 3.3V or 5V domains,
because you have pins on most Linux boards with this voltages and
these pins supply enough current for most iio sensors. Then you just
connect (wire) power pin on sensor to power pin on your board, and
then communication pins from sensor to board and ground from sensor to
board. Some addition into dts will be needed for the Linux to know
where your sensor is connected at, but then it should work as
plug-and-play.

I hope I did not miss too many steps in between :)

Crt



On Wed, 25 Sep 2019 at 10:18, Rohit Sarkar <rohitsarkar5398@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> This is probably a real rookie question.
> I have been interested in contributing to the driver subsystems such as
> iio. I have submitted some minor patches but nothing substantial.
> I feel that I need some hardware to be able to contribute more.
> What hardware would I need to get started?
> Where would I get this from?
>
> Thanks,
> Rohit

Re: Hardware prerequisites for driver development

[Rohit Sarkar]

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 10:32:02AM +0200, Crt Mori wrote:
> Hi Rohit,
> There are many companies for hobbyists which sell sensors included in
> IIO subsystem and for sure some electronic component store in your
> local area. Price of sensor can be from 0.10 USD to 10 USD. Then you
> plug this sensor to your Linux board (Beaglebone Black is Linux
> Foundation preferred, although there are others including Raspberry PI
> - can even be RPI Zero if you are on a budget, Odroid, Linaro, ...)
> and you will need to provide correct voltage/current for the sensor.
> Easiests is that you pick sensors which are 3.3V or 5V domains,
> because you have pins on most Linux boards with this voltages and
> these pins supply enough current for most iio sensors. Then you just
> connect (wire) power pin on sensor to power pin on your board, and
> then communication pins from sensor to board and ground from sensor to
> board. Some addition into dts will be needed for the Linux to know
> where your sensor is connected at, but then it should work as
> plug-and-play.
> 
> I hope I did not miss too many steps in between :)
> 
> Crt

Hi Crt,
Thanks for replying, your answer was super detailed and helpful.

Thanks,
Rohit