Windows Drivers

 
 
uCDrive

uCDrive is designed to allow microcontrollers to appear as pen drives on a PC through a simple serial port connection. Used with our file systems (TINY and THIN) it gives a new dimension to product development and management with microcontrollers. The most effective way – cost-wise and resource-wise – to access a microcontroller from a PC is through a serial port. In this way, a simple 3-wire connection can be used to enable a PC to manage configuration, diagnostic, datalogging and field upgrade functions, safely and reliably

An application (uCSynch) runs on the PC. When it detects a uCDrive enabled microcontroller on a serial port it automatically creates a drive (by default U:) under Windows Explorer. Then uCSynch synchronizes the files on the microcontroller with those in the PC. The drive can then be used as any other drive. You can record a wav file on the microcontroller and simply double click on it for it to play on the PC. Alternatively you can drop a wav file to the U: drive and get the microcontroller application to play.

Main Features:

  • Windows XP/Vista/7 driver
  • Microcontroller appears as pen drive on PC
  • Automatic synchronization between PC and microcontroller
  • Drag and drop access to microcontroller
  • Drag and drop new binary
  • Edit a file on your microcontroller with Notepad (or any other Windows application)
  • Serial number and product code identification

The demonstration programs that show the possibilities of uCDrive are available

 
 
USB RFI

RFI (Reliable File Interface) is provided as an alternative to USB mass storage under Windows

Mass storage is a very clean solution when connecting a USB drive to a PC. However, when the embedded target is complex, this solution has certain limitations:

  • Windows writes directly to the target drive; there is no way to synchronize access between the PC and the embedded application. This means that either the PC or the embedded target, but not both, can access the drive at the same time.
  • Windows generally requires that you use their FAT file system; unfortunately, FAT is not adequately reliable for embedded designs.

RFI resolves these problems by providing a more NFS-like access to the embedded system, so that the embedded system always remains in control of the storage media. Access on the embedded side is through a standard API, so the PC over USB appears simply as another task accessing the file system on the target. In this way any combination of file system types can be used on the embedded target.

RFI is provided as a Windows file system driver. It communicates with the USB device using HCC's USB Embedded Pipe driver.

RFI’s look and feel are exactly like a standard flash driver in Windows Explorer; it is only the underlying technology that is changed in this solution. With RFI, the developer has more choices and more flexibility, and the products that use RFI are significantly more robust.

 
 
USB Embedded Pipe

HCC’s Embedded Pipe for USB takes the pain out of interfacing a USB device with a host application.

Windows Side
iAn installable Windows XP/Vista driver creates a standard comm object in the PC. This driver can be accessed using simple read/write object methods. Additionally, HCC provides a simple configuration application that allows the user to configure the USB connection. Access to the Embedded Pipe comm object can be from any program - VC, Perl, VB, Vbscript, etc.
An Embedded Pipe Terminal, which is a VC++ application, is included in the package. It is, roughly analogous to HyperTerm, but is connected through a raw USB connection.

Embedded Side
The embedded side could not be simpler. The user simply reads and writes from the pipe to communicate with the host application. The internals of USB are entirely hidden.

 
 
USB Virtual COMM Port

This is a virtual comm port driver for Windows XP and Windows Vista. It fully supports the USB CDC class for serial ports, and allows the connection of unlimited devices simultaneously over a single USB connection.