Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Cypress/USRP/USB query (quick one!)

[Stephane Fillod]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 10:15:07AM +0200, Kalen Watermeyer wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm a master's student finishing up a hardware project. It is a SDR 
> platform, and I am using the EZ-FX2 microcontroller.

Can you talk a bit more about your SDR platform? Any plan on
integrating with GNU Radio ?

> 
> I know that GNURadio is intended for Linux, but I'm testing out my FX2 

Nope, GNU Radio is not intended for Linux only. Besides Linux, it is 
intended for and run under *BSD, MacOSX, Windows (MinGW and Cygwin),
Solaris, etc.

> under Windows XP (for now). Although the OS registers that a 'USB 
> Device' is present when I connect it to the PC, and it retrieves the VID 
> and PID from the FX2 (correctly I am presuming), it fails to find an 
> appropriate/plug-n-play driver for it.
> 
> I have since downloaded the USB mass storage drivers from Cypress for 
> various IC families including the FX2, and followed their instructions 
> regarding editting the .inf string values etc to match those of my app. 
> After telling XP to search for the driver in the folder containing the 
> Cypress files it still does not 'find' the driver.

I strongly recommand you libusb-win32[1]. Why? because its API is
the same for other OSes like Linux, *BSD, Darwin, .. cf. libusb[2].
So this is the choice for portability of your code and high performance.
The project is open source (GPL/LGPL), and there's excellent support
on their mailing list project.

GNU Radio is using libusb-win32 under Windows, and this is a success!

Latest libusb-win32 version 0.1.10.1 has a wizard which helps you create 
the appropriate .inf file for the filter driver. The device driver is
then developped comfortably in your user program.

[1] http://libusb-win32.sourceforge.net
[2] http://libusb.sourceforge.net

> Has anybody had any experience with using the FX2 under Windows? More 
> specifically, has anybody used the Cypress drivers for Windows? It may 
> well be that my hardware is faulty, but I am unsure how 'automatic' the 
> initialising process is with regards the FX2 so am at a dead end.

Problems with Cypress software? Ask Cypress?
Problems with Windows software? Ask Microsoft?

GNU Radio definitely choosed free open source :-)


Cheers!
-- 
Stephane