USB Console Drivers

CF Support · Dec 20, 2010

The USB Console Port on the Debug and Development daughter board (aka CFA-10032) utilizes an FTDI232RL to convert the TTL level serial port of the AT91SAM9G45 to a USB port providing a Virtual COM port.

Drivers for the FTDI232RL exist for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

For Windows, see this post on our forums for the driver (CFA_2.04.16_Modified.zip or a later version) preconfigured for all of our products using the the FTDI232RL chip.

For Linux, most distributions are built with support for the FTDI232RL chip. Our VID/PID (the USB identifiers) for the console port have not made it into the mainstream driver yet but can be added as a run-time option. Most distributions use the "modprobe" program to load modules. You can create a file that sets the parameters for the FTDI Serial I/O driver so that it will recognize the console port. In this example for Ubuntu you will create a file in "/etc/modprobe.d" that will add the VID and PID to the driver's options allowing it to recognize the console port.

Code:

echo options ftdi_sio vendor=0x223b product=0x0002 | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/cfa910_console.conf

After that is done, any time the ftdi_sio driver is loaded it will recognize the console port and it will be exposed as a serial device such as "/dev/ttyUSBXX" where XX can be any number in the sequence of usb serial devices plugged in.

To manually load the driver:

Code:

sudo modprobe ftdi_sio

For OS X, you will need to get the driver from FTDI. Install that driver as per the instructions. Similarly to the Linux driver, this driver needs to have the console port's VID and PID added to a list. In OS X you will need to modify the file "/System/Library/Extensions/FTDIUSBSerialDriver.kext/Contents/Info.plist". Find the blocks the represent the Crystalfontz drivers and add the block below to the end of them. You will need to restart your computer for the driver to make use of the change.

Code:

                <key>Crystalfontz 10032, CFA910 Console Port</key>
                <dict>
                        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
                        <string>com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver</string>
                        <key>IOClass</key>
                        <string>FTDIUSBSerialDriver</string>
                        <key>IOProviderClass</key>
                        <string>IOUSBInterface</string>
                        <key>bConfigurationValue</key>
                        <integer>1</integer>
                        <key>bInterfaceNumber</key>
                        <integer>0</integer>
                        <key>idProduct</key>
                        <integer>2</integer>
                        <key>idVendor</key>
                        <integer>8763</integer>
                </dict>

USB Console Drivers

CF Support

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