FTDI chips are frequently used as USB-to-serial adaptors, but the newer devices have the ability to drive more complex protocols such as SPI and I2C.
I like to use Python when first experimenting with new PC hardware, and there are some Python libraries for interfacing to FTDI chips, but I couldn’t find any real projects or complete worked examples.
The following posts demonstrate a step-by-step approach to driving the FTDI chips from Python, to learn about their functionality. In the final part, I implement a pure-Python graphical SWD interface that can access the internals of a CPU while it is running, in a similar way to much more sophisticated debug tools, such as OpenOCD.
Part 1: Initial experimentation
Part 2: Using Linux
Part 3: Using MPSSE to drive an SPI device
Part 4: First steps towards accessing an ARM CPU using SWD
Part 5: Reading CPU internals with SWD
Reporta: Graphical display of ARM CPU activity
If you need a more powerful debug system, take a look at my post OpenOCD on the Raspberry Pi.
Copyright (c) Jeremy P Bentham 2018. Please credit this blog if you use the information or software in it.
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