Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

Embedded computers have become very complex in the last few years and developers need to easily manage them by focusing on how to solve a problem without wasting time in finding supported peripherals or learning how to manage them. The main challenge with experienced embedded programmers and engineers is really how long it takes to turn an idea into reality, and we show you exactly how to do it. This book shows how to interact with external environments through specific peripherals used in the industry. We will use the latest Linux kernel release 4.4.x and Debian/Ubuntu distributions (with embedded distributions like OpenWrt and Yocto). The book will present popular boards in the industry that are user-friendly to base the rest of the projects on - BeagleBone Black, SAMA5D3 Xplained, Wandboard and system-on-chip manufacturers. Readers will be able to take their first steps in programming the embedded platforms, using C, Bash, and Python/PHP languages in order to get access to the external peripherals. More about using and programming device driver and accessing the peripherals will be covered to lay a strong foundation. The readers will learn how to read/write data from/to the external environment by using both C programs or a scripting language (Bash/PHP/Python) and how to configure a device driver for a specific hardware. After finishing this book, the readers will be able to gain a good knowledge level and understanding of writing, configuring, and managing drivers, controlling and monitoring applications with the help of efficient/quick programming and will be able to apply these skills into real-world projects.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
GNU/Linux Rapid Embedded Programming
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 9. Inter-Integrated Circuits - I2C

In the previous chapter, we explored the serial ports and the USB bus (with the relative devices), that is, peripherals that are typically used to connect a computer to another computer or to a device that is external to the main computer. Starting from this chapter, we will present some communication buses that are typically used to connect on-board devices, that is, the main computer with devices that are all placed on the same board.

One of the most important device class is the Inter-Integrated Circuit, which is abbreviated with the acronym I2C (or I2C). Several devices use the I2C bus to communicate with the CPU, and in this chapter, we will give you a panoramic view of them: we'll see several kinds of different devices with different configurations in order to cover the combinations offered by this bus as much as possible. For all of them, we'll see how these devices can be connected to our embedded kits and the drivers we can use to get access...