Hi, I see the Cerberus family’s firmware status table [link] has been updated, the entry for USB Host has changed from “Not much done yet” to “Not available: Awaiting community contribution”. The other item marked as ‘Not available’ is SD card support which says ‘Under development by GHI’. So I was wondering if ‘Awaiting community contribution’ meant that GHI no longer planned to write support for USB Host and were waiting to see if anyone else was going to have a go instead, or if it meant that GHI no longer need to write support for USB Host because it would duplicate effort already underway elsewhere e.g. one of the other open source board manufacturers maybe?
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GHI is planning in concentrating in optimizing all features and resolving any bugs. No more added features on our side till we know all is 100% done. This means hydra and cerberus will be 100% complete except for USB host on Cerberus.
Of course we welcome contributions to USB host.
I’d also like to see some more info on this, particularly USB Host
If someone already started the driver could we see how much is done and possibly work from that?
The Mountaineer group is now claiming that in NETMF 4.3, the STM32F4 port will be included in the official PK distribution. This is good news for everyone.
[quote=“godefroi”]The Mountaineer group is now claiming that in NETMF 4.3, the STM32F4 port will be included in the official PK distribution. This is good news for everyone.[/quote]Sorry for ignorance, what does “PK distribution” mean? Mountaineer Group’s current two boards don’t have H sockets as far as I can see so their port may not necessarily have any code for USB host mode. The only non-GHI board I can see with a USB Host H socket is Love Electronics’ Argon R1, which has the open source logo on it but I think that’s a different processor again so not sure how portable code from that would be.
The “PK distribution” is the main NETMF source code distribution from Microsoft. It simply means that it will be widely available, and therefore might get more attention.
What we really need is a NETMF port based on a CMSIS-compliant RTOS. That would make porting to just about any Cortex-M MCU (with sufficient flash and ram) quite simple.
See also this post by trioflex: http://www.netmf.com/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=2382 and this feature request: http://netmf.codeplex.com/workitem/1670
RorschachUK:
Actually our [em]Mountaineer USB Mainboard[/em] does have a DH socket, i.e., a socket for either USB Device, USB Host, or even both (USB OTG). It is socket 9, just below the micro USB connector: http://www.mountaineer.org/app/download/6083563275/MountaineerUSB.pdf?t=1340963273. But unfortunately we currently have no USB Host driver, and no time to work on one in the foreseeable future.
godefroi:
For us, NETMF is particularly attractive not least because it is able to run “on the metal” without the added complexity and overhead of a separate RTOS. It’s not just RAM and speed, it’s really also the overall complexity and “impedance mismatches” (e.g., different multithreading models). Note that our NETMF port uses the CMSIS files, but CMSIS doesn’t buy us portability of the peripheral drivers. Those need to be rewritten for a different vendor’s Cortex family.
Hi, any news with Cerberus USB Host support?
We have done a lot of work in that area but nothing we can share yet. Oberon also talked about adding this feature. Maybe with 4.3.
Welcome to the community.
Hi! Are there any news about USB Host since 2012?
We have added USB Host support to our commercial [em]Mountaineer Prime Firmware[/em], which is used e.g. in this project: http://www.mountaineer.org/app/download/7120290775/NETMF+Reference+2G+Drives+V20131023+final.pdf?t=1382521965
See also here: http://www.mountaineer-boards.com/prime/.
@ Cuno - Does the Mountaineer Prime Firmware have something similar to SignalCapture/SignalGenerator ?
@ Architect - Can you send me an email to pfister@ oberon.ch?
Am I right that your Mountaineer USB Mainboard doesn’t support USB Host feature as Prime firmware is available for Prime M4-MCU only?