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Version 2 (modified by Ryan Erbstoesser, 7 years ago) ( diff )
add spidev section back in

Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI)

Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI)

The Serial Peripheral Interface bus is a synchronous serial communication interface specification used for short distance communication primary in embedded systems. The interface was originally developed by Motorola and can be used in a master or slave configuration. It is typically used as a 3-wire bus containing the following signals (other than power and ground and chip-selects):

SCLK
MISO
MOSI
SS# (Optional Slave Select)

SPI can be a multi-slave bus if chip selects are used which are asserted by the host controller to enable one device at a time.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface_Bus

USB Expansion devices

A SPI master can also be added via USB expansion. For example:

Ventana

GW5220

The i.MX6 Ventana GW5220 brings out the IMX6 ECSPI3 bus to the 6-pin J24 expansion connector for connection to a 3.3V TTL SPI slave device:

J24.1 - MOSI
J24.2 - MISO
J24.3 - SCLK
J24.4 - SS0#
J24.5 - 3.3V
J24.6 - GND

GW54xx (Revision E+)

The i.MX6 Ventana GW54xx brings out the IMX6 ECSPI2 bus to the 6-pin J32 expansion connector for connection to a 3.3V TTL SPI slave device:

J32.1 - MOSI
J32.2 - MISO
J32.3 - SCLK
J32.4 - SS0#
J32.5 - 3.3V
J32.6 - GND

Adding Kernel Support for Specific SPI Devices

In order to support the specific device you plan to connect an addition to the GW5220 device tree must be made.

Follow these instructions up to and including step 5 of "Building the Linux Kernel"
Open the file at .../linux-imx6/arch/arm/boot/dts/imx6qdl-gw52xx.dtsi and find the node labeled "&ecspi3" (if absent, jump to the above section before continuing)
In the same location as the comment in step 5 of the above section, add your appropriate device configuration in a node beginning with "flash: "
Continue the instructions from step 1 to finish building your new kernel

An example of a properly made configuration node for a m25p32-vme6g nor flash device would be:

flash: m25p80@0 {                         /* "m25p80@0" parameter is the driver responsible for controlling your device */
        compatible = "m25p32";            /* "m25p32" parameter is your device ID string */
        spi-max-frequency = <30000000>;   /* assigned value is your device frequency specified by its datasheet (in decimal) */
        reg = <0>;                        /* is generally 0 for single device connections */
        #device-width = <1>;              /* These next three lines are not comments, but rather specially formatted
        #address-cells = <1>;              * attributes that the driver will receive. The actual values assigned here
        #size-cells = <1>;                 * are device specific, and should be entered after consulting the data sheet
                                           */
        partition@0 {                     /* The label of the 0th partition; following partitions follow the "partition@X" format */
                label = "data";           /* The name of this partition  */
                reg = <0x0 0x2000000>;    /* The starting address, followed by the length of the partition (in hex) */
        };
};

Note that the values shown in the above node are specific to the m25p32-vme6g, and can vary greatly from the actual device you are using. Replace attribute values as necessary.

When searching for your device ID string or its controlling driver, searching via a LXR site like the one at missing link electronics for your device name can be helpful.

Laguna

While SPI is used for on-board FLASH storage for many Laguna boards, it also is brought out to the J9 expansion connector available on the Laguna GW2388:

J9.2 - CS#
J9.4 - SCLK
J9.6 - MISO
J9.8 - MOSI
J9.10 - GND

spidev - Userspace SPI API

SPI devices have a limited userspace API, supporting basic half-duplex read() and write() access to SPI slave devices. Using ioctl() requests, full duplex transfers and device I/O configuration are also available.

	#include <fcntl.h>
	#include <unistd.h>
	#include <sys/ioctl.h>
	#include <linux/types.h>
	#include <linux/spi/spidev.h>

Some reasons you might want to use this programming interface include:

Prototyping in an environment that's not crash-prone; stray pointers in userspace won't normally bring down any Linux system.
Developing simple protocols used to talk to microcontrollers acting as SPI slaves, which you may need to change quite often.

Of course there are drivers that can never be written in userspace, because they need to access kernel interfaces (such as IRQ handlers or other layers of the driver stack) that are not accessible to userspace.

Userspace access to SPI devices is done through the /dev/spidev<bus>.<chip-select> device interface. In order to use this you must have spidev enabled in the kernel (CONFIG_SPI_SPIDEV) and have a spidev node defined under the SPI controller in the device-tree.