RE: [ECOS] USB host mode support?

["Lewin A.R.W. Edwards" <larwe@larwe.com>]

> >What's your flash/ROM budget
>4M of ROM and 8M RAM.

Ow. If it's really ROM and not flash, and you have no rewritable 
non-volatile storage, then you're in trouble and my feeling is that a 
rethink is in order. You won't be able to update your drivers without a ROM 
swap (which is doable, of course, but _expensive_).

If your only aim is to add wireless support for some specific protocol, it 
will be _so_ much easier to buy a prefab wireless module.

The memory budget isn't impossible for embedded Linux, but I'm no expert on 
it so I'll bow out in favor of those who are. The only distribution I've 
played with for a reasonable length of time is ucLinux. Whichever 
distribution you go with will be tempered strongly by your host CPU (you 
only mentioned that it's an ARM; did you really mean StrongARM [seems 
plausible given the talk of host-side USB]). You might want to look at 
Royal Linux (I've installed it once, haven't played with it much; I only 
mention it because I know it supports ARM).

>Ethernet-to-wireless-flavor-of-the-month adapter. My experience as a
>consumer of a couple of appliances with host-side USB is that the
>instruction manual says "You can use the USB ports to plug in a mouse or
>
>So you have done this?

Have we done what? I mention above that I have bought/owned a couple of 
appliances (set-top box, Internet appliance) that had host-side USB, and it 
went the way you might expect - too much engineering cost to support 
additional peripherals, so it's just a decorative hole in the box.

As for our own products, we decided that wireless is too infant and 
non-standardized right now. Also it is not an accepted standard in the way 
that Ethernet is. We don't want to tell our users to buy any specific piece 
of wireless hardware in order to talk to us, so we went with the lowest 
common denominator: Ethernet on the appliance, and if they want wireless 
they gate it themselves. At worst the user has to buy a $5 Ethernet card to 
talk to us.

This approach also reduces the ongoing support issues greatly; a big 
consideration for us.

=== Lewin A.R.W. Edwards (Embedded Engineer)
Work: http://www.digi-frame.com/
Personal: http://www.zws.com/ and http://www.larwe.com/

"Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein."