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probe-rs / hs-probe

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USB TTL UART Capability #12

Open dbrgn opened 3 years ago

dbrgn commented 3 years ago

I'm not sure if this is possible over the shared USB port, but: When debugging a device with UART output, it would be fantastic if the hs-probe could also be used as a serial adapter via USB.

Is it possible that a USB device can be used both as a programmer/debugger, and as a separate serial adapter?

Right now I always need to plug in two cables into my computer: The JLink and a generic USB serial adapter... It would be great if those could be merged. (Yes, I'm aware of RTT, but some projects need to use UART...)

Disasm commented 3 years ago

hs-probe for sure can be used in this way, but we don't have a firmware support yet. But this is definitely something to be implemented!

dbrgn commented 3 years ago

Ah, awesome! :tada:

What about the hardware? The SWD pinout doesn't have serial RX/TX. But on this rendering...

image

...there are two RX/TX pins on the right side. Could those be used, given firmware support?

Maybe a dedicated 3-pin header (RX/TX/GND) could be added in a future version.

Disasm commented 3 years ago

RX/TX signals are also available on the STDC14 connector. The ones on the board edge are the same signals. And yes, these are the signals that will be used by the USB serial port. Actually, it's already present in firmware and available to your host system, but all the data comes directly into the void.

dbrgn commented 3 years ago

RX/TX signals are also available on the STDC14 connector.

Ah, interesting! So far I've mostly used the 10-pin SWD connector in my projects, but that might be a reason to switch to the 14-pin connector.

Actually, it's already present in firmware and available to your host system, but all the data comes directly into the void.

@Yatekii I'm very much looking forward to the first hardware prototypes, I might give this a try :slightly_smiling_face: