FTDI Vinculum II USB OTG

It took longer to download and  install the software than it did to get a working example with the FTDI Vinculum II chip this evening! The IDE looks great, the C-style language looks quite nice to work with, and the inline debugging is awesome. Putting breakpoints in code and stepping through, one line at a time is a brilliant way to debug code.

Although it doesn't really make much sense at the minute, as we're not too familiar with the language itself, the actual programming environment looks very encouraging.

We've been told that the FTDI Vinculum II chip has microcontroller facilities, as well as a hardware-based USB stack (so the device itself takes care of the tricky USB stuff, rather than us having to write our own firmware for USB) and this makes it easier to work with than the PIC 24F counterpart.

Like most things, it'll probably come down to a matter of personal preference. But so far, the FTDI VNC-II looks quite promising. Let's see how we get on....

USB OTG FTDI (any other acronyms?)

A good while back, we made some miniature instruments for playing samples on a PC. They worked quite well and we got a bit of interest and sold a few kits online. But how technology marches on!
No sooner had we got them working with a computer, when users started asking when could they plug them into the mobile phones and Android tablets!

And following on from a discussion with Robot Steve the other night, we're thinking that making mobile-friendly versions of our miniature instruments would be a pretty cool intro to USB OTG.

No sooner had our PIC 24F USB development board arrived, than Jason from Stuff and Nonsense suggested a hardware-based USB stack from FTDI. So we got ourselves a debugger/programmer (https://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1825836) and a development module (https://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=1825829) off the Farnell website.

That's right - next day, 8am, sure enough there was a thump-thump-thump on the front door and a beaming postie with a parcel covered in Farnell/element14 livery. I guess we really need to do something about fixing that doorbell.