I'm looking for a breakout board that acts as a usb host, polls a device and outputs in UART. (Or SPI/i2c)
Does such a thing exist?
I want a plug and play job.
I know the USB protocol pretty well, and other than polling rate I don't see why the whole opperation can't be handled in hardware and without programing. Initial comms, enumeration, Hz and syncing can all be done automatically.
Ideally it could communicate with multiple devices, and distribute the various devices on SPI (ss) or assign addresses to I2c. Not the end of the world if it can only do one device. I would just buy one for each port.
I've tried the Arduino host shield, which I've had working. But the programing is extremely complicated, and the various librarys have lots of bugs and compile problems.
There's plenty of serial(UART) to USB devices but very few USB to serial. IE very few act as host. I've know of MAX3421 which is the one on the arduino shield and FT4222 which I've got on order. (But I'm sceptical it will be plug and play.)
Anyone know of any such thing, or if not, any reason why they don't exist?
Thankyou for the replies. So its looking like buying a whole microcontroller to handle each usb connection, or one with a hub attached. Probably easier to get multiple microcontrollers as there only cheap, then just duplicate.
Interestingly i bought a Ps/2 key board. It comes with a little USB to PS/2 adaptor. The key board is a standard USB device. There is no hardware inside the adaptor, so im guesing most PS/2 connections on a comuter are geard up for reciving USB protocol through a PS/2 plug and converting it.
Ive bought a PS/2 driver board (pict attached) which presumably does the same thing. Im assuming because the only things being connected are slow HMI devices they can fix the poll rate at say 1ms, thus achieving a plug and play solution with no need for config/programing
Im hoping it might work with a scanner and a mouse too. Will update, later. Thanks again Dave :)
