Posted on November 23, 2012 at 13:52Hi
For future projects, I'm looking for the most easy to deploy and foolproof way to communicate between a STM32-based system (mostly L1, some F1) and a PC host.
There seems to be 4 ways (Ethernet is not available on L1s):
- virtual COM port on USB required specific drivers on the host (lots of issues, specifically on systems that require signed drivers), but communication speed is Ok.
- build-in UART, but most modern PC have no serial port, and a serial to USB adapter have the same issues as the previous solution.
- Mass storage on USB (put config as a file, read results as a file), fast, does not require drivers, and file access routines tend to be totally system-independent. For some applications, you don't even need a specific host software, a simple text editor will be enough. But implementation on the STM32, including FAT-style file system, doesn't seems to be straightforward, and will be a nightmare to debug (no way to put breakpoints when the PC is trying to access some blocks).
- lastly, HID on USB does not require drivers, but I'm not sure what the practical throughput is, and if the host software can be made reasonably platform-independent, or will depend on lots of low-level system calls.
My questions are very open-ended (I hope it's ok): what technique is a never-ending debugging nightmare (on the µC or the PC) and should be avoided? What technique is the most flexible and easy to support if you intent to deploy on a large diversity of host hardware and don't want to develop a specific driver?
If you seen any other way to achieve the same goals (reliability+portability), I'm interested. Thanks.
S.
