Austin, Texas
June 14, 2009
June 14, 2009
June 17, 2009
2153-5965
Instrumentation
8
14.783.1 - 14.783.8
10.18260/1-2--5525
https://peer.asee.org/5525
1927
Gurinder Singh brings almost a decade of experience in the electronics industry to his position as Senior Field Applications Engineer
with Future Technology Devices International Ltd. At FTDI Gurinder is actively involved in embedded USB HOST designs, application notes, technical support on USB devices and HOST controllers, guiding customers to obtain WHQL certifications and USB 2.0 compliance certifications along with providing sample codes and professional manufacturing test tools for production lines using USB devices in their products. Gurinder also provide technical guidelines to implement USB devices on Windows mobile platform like Win CE 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.0. He is also involved in writing firmware for our products and we are successfully launching USB-CAN sniffer and RS232-CAN monitor products based on his excellent work.
Lakshmi Munukutla received her Ph.D. degree in Solid State Physics from Ohio University, Athens, Ohio and M.Sc and B.Sc degrees from Andhra University, India. She has been active in research and published several journal articles. She is a professor in the Department of Engineering Technology at Arizona State University at the Polytechnic campus.
Interfacing USB Printer using Vinculum Host Controller
Abstract
This paper describes implementation of a portable USB printer interface using Vinculum Host Controller VNC1L. The project idea presented has a variety of real-world applications including in medical portable devices, field testing devices, ticketing systems, gas receipt printing system to name a few. Today almost all the printers have a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface for connection to a personal computer (PC) or a control device. The USB interface has several advantages over previous generation of connection methods such as parallel ports. A USB port is much faster than a parallel port (can handle 12Mbps) and a single port can handle different devices. For example, a USB port can handle flash disks, mouse, keyboard, etc. whereas the parallel port was pretty much dedicated for the printer connection. In this paper we present an embedded micro-controller based control device that has a USB controller port with printer interface and can be operated on a battery. This paper will describe the details how the Vinculum USB Host controller is used to implement interface to USB print class devices with Freescale HC-12 used to control VNC1L. It is very important for technical students to gain familiarity with USB. This application can be used to understand embedded/non-PC usage of USB devices. The possibility of using this as a classroom USB project is also explored in this paper.
1. Introduction Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an input/output port standard for computers and digital equipment that allows easy transfer of data at high speeds via a direct connection or cable. A USB connection is always between a host or hub at the "A" connector end, and a device or hub's upstream port at the other end. Typically, personal computer implements the USB host controller and has built-in hub to provide multiple USB ports. In embedded applications, a micro-controller unit (MCU) with built-in host controller or a discrete USB host controller module is used to provide connectivity for USB devices. In the application design presented in this paper Vinculum Host Controller is used along with a Motorola MCU to implement USB printer interface.
The USB enumeration process happens when a device is plugged to the USB host controller. The host controller handles the device requirements using standard USB descriptors supplied by device. USB 2.0 specification defines a specific device class for printing devices. VNC1L USB Host controller implements and supports USB print class device, configuration, and interface and endpoint descriptors as per USB printer device specification. It also supports USB printer class specific request and response structure used by basic Printer Command language (PCL) interface.
Singh, G., & Munukutla, L. (2009, June), Interfacing The Usb Printer Interface Using Vinculum Host Controller Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5525
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2009 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015