Techy, Geeky, Cool
Yesterday I proved to myself that I am at heart a geek; I found my Netbank’s “export” option, and used it to create graphs of my balance (delta and absolutes) over the past year or so since I got the account. The geeky maxim holds true once again: “If it can be represented on a computer, it can and must be spreadsheeted”.
More improvements are coming to the RNDIS demo of MyUSB. I still recommend against using my network stack in anything remotely important, as it’s more of a learning experience for me than a full blown, feature complete, zero-bug stack — after all, MyUSB is a *USB* library, not a TCP/IP stack. That said, I’ve fixed a lot of its problems, with only multiple simultaneous connections from the same computer on the same port still causing problems. I’m currently adding in UDP and DHCP protocol support, so that the next iteration of the demo won’t require any manual configuration of the adapter’s IP address to get it working – you’ll just plug it in and give it the driver INF file, and it will do the rest.
I’m also in a discussion with a few prominant AVR-USB people (Matt from AVROpendous, Paul from PJRC – rundown of Paul’s new “Teensy” board to come soon – and Donald from DorkbotPDX) about the possibility of future MyUSB versions to ship with simplified Wiriring interfaces for easy (if basic) control of the USB interface with no advanced programming knowedge required. Such an interface would be optional – i.e. the existing framework will remain identical – but would allow for complete newbies to get up and running with Virtual Serial ports for debugging and the like in only a couple of minutes. So far, so good, and once the details of the implementation are fleshed out I’ll start work on it.
Such an interface will not be present in the next 1.5.4 release of MyUSB, but will most likely exist in some form in the version following that. The release of 1.5.4 will be a new milestone, as it will reflect a mature framework with mature examples and much better documentation. It’ll also sport a new name: LUFA, the Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs. This name will come into use with the release of 1.5.4, and all documentation and site pages will be updated to reflect the name change.
