Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length.

[jcsb1994]

Hi! as an introductory work to FTDI chips, I wanted to work on a game controller project (or keyboard, as long as I make something work!) using an AVR chip and a FT260 as the USB bridge.

My plan was to use UART from the AVR to write ASCII characters to the FT260, which in turn would send those to the host PC to be perceived like key presses. I must admit I am lost, I am not sure where to start, but I will ask the questions I think are the most important:

1. FT260 has GPIOs, plus Ive seen dev boards for it, it looks like its meant to be used as an MCU by itself. I bought mine from Digikey and never used them, do they have the required firmware to act as a UART-USB bridge from their factory state? Do I need to program the virgin chips? If yes, with what? I do not have a programmer for them, nor IDE, nor codebase! Otherwise, I would just design a PCB that connects the AVR's UART to the FT260 and to a usb connector and hopefully when I plug it in, the computer will display HID device detected.

2. If I do not need to program the FT260 and can use my AVR with it right away, how do I set up my chip to act as a keyboard, or game controller? Is there a code example I could refer to?

3. Do I have to do anything from the PC side? Or once the firmware and PCB is complete, I can just plug it in and the device will work as expected (game controller or keyboard, depending on what I choose to implement)

Thanks a lot for your support...

[FTDI Community]

Hello,

unfortunately, FT260 cannot act as a game controller or a game controller. However it is a HID device.

FT260 can be programmed either by using raw HID commands, or its dedicated library LibFT260. There are code examples for LibFT260 available in the library download which is available on the FTDI website. https://ftdichip.com/software-examples/.

we also have some useful documentation for FT260 that you can have a look at:

User Guide for FT260
User Guide for LibFT260
FT260_I2C_Example_in_Csharpz

Best Regards

FTDI Community

[Bryant]

Hi,FTDI Community
    I'm new to the ftdicommunity. I want to post in the community to ask for help with FT260, but I can't find the entry for Posting.
Could you please provide the steps or SOP for Posting in the community?

[FTDI Community]

Hello,

You should browse to the appropriate area like here:

FTDI Community >General Category >Discussion - Software

Then you need to click on New Topic at the top. Make sure you have logged in.

Alternatively you can send an email to your local support office:

https://ftdichip.com/technical-support/

Best Regards,
FTDI Community

[Bryant]

Hi,

Got it, thanks.

[jcsb1994]

cannot act as a game controller or a game controller.

I hope you didn't mean keyboard? If it can't act as a keyboard either, then I don't understand, it cannot act like any of the HID profiles? I need guidance like I was 5 lol I am completely lost, will my project work with the FT260 or I am losing time?

I dont understand what I can do at all with FT260 if it cannot be a game controller (or keyboard?). Can you give me an example of product that could use a FT260? If there is really nothing I can do with it for my keyboard/game controller project, do you have another chip I could use that could serve this purpose?

Thanks..

[FTDI Community]

Hello,

FT260 can't act like standard HID class devices (keyboard, game controller, etc).

The FT260 supports 3 modes:
-   USB-HID to I²C
-   USB-HID to UART
-   HID-over-I²C, supports Microsoft’s HID-over-I²C protocol.

The first two modes are general data bridge via HID class.

In HID-over-I²C mode, the FT260 needs to configure a interrupt to communicate the attached device.
This would use a built in driver for this. This is a defined protocol and the I2C device would need to support this too. This can be used for touchscreens for example.

The “HID-over-I²C” protocol is defined by Microsoft, and you can check the following link for the specification:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn642101(v=vs.85).aspx

Best Regards,
FTDI Community