Raspberry Pi SPI Command-line Utility 1.3.1 Available

The Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity, spincl, has been updated. Ver­sion 1.3.1 is now avail­able. iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally released the Rasp­berry Pi SPI util­ity in Feb­ru­ary, 2013 licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3. This spincl update is cov­ered under the same license.

The fol­low­ing items are included in the update:

  • This ver­sion was built with the bcm2835-1.25 library. All pre­vi­ous ver­sions were built with bcm2835-17.
  • This ver­sion was tested on 2013-02-09 raspian wheezy. The 2012-10-28 raspian wheezy was used for all pre­vi­ous versions.

iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally cre­ated the Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form for the con­ve­nience of hard­ware debug and to indi­rectly add SPI func­tion­al­ity to script­ing lan­guages such as Bash and Python.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script. A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable. Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.

Check the orig­i­nal post for a full expla­na­tion of the Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity and to down­load the lat­est version.

Raspberry Pi SPI Command-line Utility Update

The Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity, spincl, has been updated.  Ver­sion 1.3.0 is now avail­able.  iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally released the Rasp­berry Pi SPI util­ity in Feb­ru­ary, 2013, licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3.  This spincl update is cov­ered under the same license.

The fol­low­ing items are included in the update:

  • Bug Fix:  A bug in the way the num­ber of trans­mit bytes was cal­cu­lated has been fixed.  Pre­vi­ously, if the total byte length of the trans­fer was greater than the num­ber of spec­i­fied xmit bytes then an attempt to access command-line argu­ments beyond the num­ber avail­able would occur, which causes a seg­men­ta­tion fault.
  • suid bit is now set in the install tar­get of Makefile.

iP Solu­tions orig­i­nally cre­ated the Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form for the con­ve­nience of hard­ware debug and to indi­rectly add SPI func­tion­al­ity to script­ing lan­guages such as Bash and Python.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script.  A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable.  Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.

Check the orig­i­nal post for a full expla­na­tion of the Rasp­berry Pi SPI command-line util­ity and to down­load the lat­est version.

 

SPI Command-line Utility for Raspberry Pi

Raspberry PiiP Solu­tions has cre­ated a Ser­ial Periph­eral Inter­face (SPI) command-line util­ity for the Rasp­berry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org) plat­form.  The util­ity, spincl, is licensed under Open Source GNU GPLv3 and is being offered by iP Solu­tions as a free down­load with source included.

Although a C library exists for the Broad­com bcm2835 with an SPI Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­face (API) among other things, there are rea­sons to have a command-line util­ity, which can be invoked from a shell com­mand line or from within a script.  A command-line util­ity allows easy test­ing and debug­ging of SPI slave devices with­out hav­ing to develop a C exe­cutable.  Addi­tion­ally, it pro­vides a sim­ple way for bash and python scripts to access the SPI mas­ter of the BCM2835 on Rasp­berry Pi. Although the raspian dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­vides GPIO libraries with the included python instal­la­tion it doesn’t include an SPI library. spincl, on the other hand, can be invoked from a python (or bash) script.   Con­tinue read­ing

Embedded Linux DSP System for Chemical and Radiation Threat Detection

C-Scout

iP Solu­tions brought exten­sive knowl­edge of Embed­ded Linux DSP sys­tems hard­ware and soft­ware to the Nevada Nan­otech Sys­tems (NNTS) project for explo­sive chem­i­cal and radi­a­tion threat detec­tion and  analy­sis. The project, CScout, was tar­geted for ship­ping con­tainer security.

Pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with com­plex embed­ded con­trol and data acqui­si­tion sys­tems enabled iP Solu­tions to imme­di­ately begin con­tribut­ing to this project.  The pri­mary goal was to design both hard­ware and soft­ware for using an NNTS Mol­e­c­u­lar Prop­er­ties Sen­sor (MPS) to col­lect, ana­lyze and present explo­sive chem­i­cal vapor threat data.  Addi­tion­ally, radi­a­tion spec­trum data was to be col­lected and ana­lyzed for any radi­a­tion threat com­po­nents.  This sys­tem was to be con­trolled and results com­mu­ni­cated remotely through a wire­less inter­face, the Mar­itime Asset Tag Track­ing Sys­tem (MATTS).  Also, a hard­wired net­work con­nec­tion was to enable more exten­sive main­te­nance and engi­neer­ing modes with web-based and ter­mi­nal based interfaces.

The CScout sys­tem was suc­cess­fully com­pleted with impres­sive mea­sure­ment results. This sys­tem will be used for demon­stra­tion of NNTS sen­sor capa­bil­i­ties to poten­tial cus­tomers. Con­tinue read­ing