CP2102 / USB-TO-UART chips customization functionality. (ESPTOOL-949)

cederom commented 4 weeks ago

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Many different devkits have the same VID:PID, Name, SN identificators.
Build test farms (i.e. NuttX RTOS) that have many devkits connected via USB-TO-SERIAL adapters may not use boards with the same identification strings because often serial port device (i.e. /dev/cuaU*) numbers are assigned randomly on attach. Problem is even worse then 16 port USB HUBs are used with dynamic port power cycling.

Describe the solution you'd like

Ability to customize USB-TO-SERIAL chips (i.e. VID:PID, Name, SN) built directly into the esptool.
It would enable easily identification of various develkits using the same USB-TO-UART chips based on unique VID:PID, Name, and SN and help in build/runtime testing automation.
Add option to esptool.py --port-filter to also filter based on SN.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I found two reference utilitities that can customize CP2102 chip:
- C: https://github.com/DiUS/cp210x-cfg
- Python: https://github.com/cederom/cp210x-program
cp210x-cfg works fine and allows Name and SN change to CP2102 on the ESP32-DevKitC several times.

Additional context

% uname -a
FreeBSD octagon 13.3-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE-p7 GENERIC amd64

% ./cp210x-cfg
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Serial: 0001

% dd if=/dev/random count=1M | md5
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
536870912 bytes transferred in 3.788303 secs (141718053 bytes/sec)

% ./cp210x-cfg -h
Syntax:
cp210x-cfg [-h ] |
           [-m vid:pid] [-d bus:dev]
           [ -l | [-V vid] [-P pid] [-F flush] [-M mode] [-N name] [-S serial]]

  -h            This help
  -m vid:pid    Find and use first device with vid:pid
  -d bus:dev    Find and use device at bus:dev
  -l            List all CP210x devices connected
  -V vid        Program the given Vendor ID
  -P pid        Program the given Product ID
  -F flush      Program the given buffer flush bitmap (CP2105 only)
  -M mode       Program the given SCI/ECI mode (CP2105 only)
  -N name       Program the given product name string
  -S serial     Program the given serial string

Unless the -d option is used, the first found CP210x device is used.
If no programming options are used, the current values are printed.

% ./cp210x-cfg -S 76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Serial: 76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Serial: 76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg -N ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007: CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Serial: ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg -N ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007:
ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Serial: ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007:
ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Serial: ESP32DEVKITC-CDR-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg -S ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007:
ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Serial: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

% ./cp210x-cfg
ID 10c4:ea60 @ bus 000, dev 007:
ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Model: CP2102
Vendor ID: 10c4
Product ID: ea60
Name: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d
Serial: ESP32DEVKITC-CeDeROM-76f24aad88225fedf7260bb4f54c525d

radimkarnis commented 3 weeks ago

Hi @cederom, Thank you for the suggestion!

This is an interesting feature, but completely out of the scope of esptool.

Esptool is a utility for working with chips from the ESP family. It is agnostic to DevKit configuration and components, such as USB-to-UART bridges. What's more, this would only work for Silicon Labs cp210x chips. What about FTDI or CH340 chips?

The idea to add a serial number filter option sounds good, we'll most likely include that, but the logic to program cp210x chips has to stay in a separate package.

cederom commented 3 weeks ago

Thank you @radimkarnis :-) I thought so but I had to try this seems mandatory feature when more devices are under test but its not here yet and needs some time/work :-)

I also proposed this idea to PySerial https://github.com/pyserial/pyserial/issues/779 that you use and may leverage this functionality whenever it shows up or from another module :-)

As a big company you have better advantage to convince vendors to create this kind of tool (i.e. python module) whenever it is for CP201X or CH34XX it seems a really useful feature! :-)

zsteva commented 6 days ago

simple use udev rules (at least on linux) to make uniq symlink based on serial number of chip chip.

espressif / esptool