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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/spi/spidev')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/spi/spidev | 149 |
1 files changed, 149 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/spi/spidev b/Documentation/spi/spidev new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3d14035b1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/spi/spidev @@ -0,0 +1,149 @@ +SPI devices have a limited userspace API, supporting basic half-duplex +read() and write() access to SPI slave devices. Using ioctl() requests, +full duplex transfers and device I/O configuration are also available. + + #include <fcntl.h> + #include <unistd.h> + #include <sys/ioctl.h> + #include <linux/types.h> + #include <linux/spi/spidev.h> + +Some reasons you might want to use this programming interface include: + + * Prototyping in an environment that's not crash-prone; stray pointers + in userspace won't normally bring down any Linux system. + + * Developing simple protocols used to talk to microcontrollers acting + as SPI slaves, which you may need to change quite often. + +Of course there are drivers that can never be written in userspace, because +they need to access kernel interfaces (such as IRQ handlers or other layers +of the driver stack) that are not accessible to userspace. + + +DEVICE CREATION, DRIVER BINDING +=============================== +The simplest way to arrange to use this driver is to just list it in the +spi_board_info for a device as the driver it should use: the "modalias" +entry is "spidev", matching the name of the driver exposing this API. +Set up the other device characteristics (bits per word, SPI clocking, +chipselect polarity, etc) as usual, so you won't always need to override +them later. + +(Sysfs also supports userspace driven binding/unbinding of drivers to +devices. That mechanism might be supported here in the future.) + +When you do that, the sysfs node for the SPI device will include a child +device node with a "dev" attribute that will be understood by udev or mdev. +(Larger systems will have "udev". Smaller ones may configure "mdev" into +busybox; it's less featureful, but often enough.) For a SPI device with +chipselect C on bus B, you should see: + + /dev/spidevB.C ... character special device, major number 153 with + a dynamically chosen minor device number. This is the node + that userspace programs will open, created by "udev" or "mdev". + + /sys/devices/.../spiB.C ... as usual, the SPI device node will + be a child of its SPI master controller. + + /sys/class/spidev/spidevB.C ... created when the "spidev" driver + binds to that device. (Directory or symlink, based on whether + or not you enabled the "deprecated sysfs files" Kconfig option.) + +Do not try to manage the /dev character device special file nodes by hand. +That's error prone, and you'd need to pay careful attention to system +security issues; udev/mdev should already be configured securely. + +If you unbind the "spidev" driver from that device, those two "spidev" nodes +(in sysfs and in /dev) should automatically be removed (respectively by the +kernel and by udev/mdev). You can unbind by removing the "spidev" driver +module, which will affect all devices using this driver. You can also unbind +by having kernel code remove the SPI device, probably by removing the driver +for its SPI controller (so its spi_master vanishes). + +Since this is a standard Linux device driver -- even though it just happens +to expose a low level API to userspace -- it can be associated with any number +of devices at a time. Just provide one spi_board_info record for each such +SPI device, and you'll get a /dev device node for each device. + + +BASIC CHARACTER DEVICE API +========================== +Normal open() and close() operations on /dev/spidevB.D files work as you +would expect. + +Standard read() and write() operations are obviously only half-duplex, and +the chipselect is deactivated between those operations. Full-duplex access, +and composite operation without chipselect de-activation, is available using +the SPI_IOC_MESSAGE(N) request. + +Several ioctl() requests let your driver read or override the device's current +settings for data transfer parameters: + + SPI_IOC_RD_MODE, SPI_IOC_WR_MODE ... pass a pointer to a byte which will + return (RD) or assign (WR) the SPI transfer mode. Use the constants + SPI_MODE_0..SPI_MODE_3; or if you prefer you can combine SPI_CPOL + (clock polarity, idle high iff this is set) or SPI_CPHA (clock phase, + sample on trailing edge iff this is set) flags. + Note that this request is limited to SPI mode flags that fit in a + single byte. + + SPI_IOC_RD_MODE32, SPI_IOC_WR_MODE32 ... pass a pointer to a uin32_t + which will return (RD) or assign (WR) the full SPI transfer mode, + not limited to the bits that fit in one byte. + + SPI_IOC_RD_LSB_FIRST, SPI_IOC_WR_LSB_FIRST ... pass a pointer to a byte + which will return (RD) or assign (WR) the bit justification used to + transfer SPI words. Zero indicates MSB-first; other values indicate + the less common LSB-first encoding. In both cases the specified value + is right-justified in each word, so that unused (TX) or undefined (RX) + bits are in the MSBs. + + SPI_IOC_RD_BITS_PER_WORD, SPI_IOC_WR_BITS_PER_WORD ... pass a pointer to + a byte which will return (RD) or assign (WR) the number of bits in + each SPI transfer word. The value zero signifies eight bits. + + SPI_IOC_RD_MAX_SPEED_HZ, SPI_IOC_WR_MAX_SPEED_HZ ... pass a pointer to a + u32 which will return (RD) or assign (WR) the maximum SPI transfer + speed, in Hz. The controller can't necessarily assign that specific + clock speed. + +NOTES: + + - At this time there is no async I/O support; everything is purely + synchronous. + + - There's currently no way to report the actual bit rate used to + shift data to/from a given device. + + - From userspace, you can't currently change the chip select polarity; + that could corrupt transfers to other devices sharing the SPI bus. + Each SPI device is deselected when it's not in active use, allowing + other drivers to talk to other devices. + + - There's a limit on the number of bytes each I/O request can transfer + to the SPI device. It defaults to one page, but that can be changed + using a module parameter. + + - Because SPI has no low-level transfer acknowledgement, you usually + won't see any I/O errors when talking to a non-existent device. + + +FULL DUPLEX CHARACTER DEVICE API +================================ + +See the spidev_fdx.c sample program for one example showing the use of the +full duplex programming interface. (Although it doesn't perform a full duplex +transfer.) The model is the same as that used in the kernel spi_sync() +request; the individual transfers offer the same capabilities as are +available to kernel drivers (except that it's not asynchronous). + +The example shows one half-duplex RPC-style request and response message. +These requests commonly require that the chip not be deselected between +the request and response. Several such requests could be chained into +a single kernel request, even allowing the chip to be deselected after +each response. (Other protocol options include changing the word size +and bitrate for each transfer segment.) + +To make a full duplex request, provide both rx_buf and tx_buf for the +same transfer. It's even OK if those are the same buffer. |