Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices

  



Manufacturer: Panasonic: Model: TX-65HX940E: Creator: Control4: Modified Date: Mon Jul 06 14:52:00 UTC 2020: Device Type: TV: Control Method: IP Version. If the device-specific driver is distributed through Windows Update, you can manually update the driver by using Device Manager. For more information about how to do this, see update drivers in Windows 10. If the device is not yet connected, first install the device-specific driver, such as by using the appropriate installer.

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I/O software is often organized in the following layers −

  • User Level Libraries − This provides simple interface to the user program to perform input and output. For example, stdio is a library provided by C and C++ programming languages.

  • Kernel Level Modules − This provides device driver to interact with the device controller and device independent I/O modules used by the device drivers.

  • Hardware − This layer includes actual hardware and hardware controller which interact with the device drivers and makes hardware alive.

A key concept in the design of I/O software is that it should be device independent where it should be possible to write programs that can access any I/O device without having to specify the device in advance. For example, a program that reads a file as input should be able to read a file on a floppy disk, on a hard disk, or on a CD-ROM, without having to modify the program for each different device.

Device Drivers

Device drivers are software modules that can be plugged into an OS to handle a particular device. Operating System takes help from device drivers to handle all I/O devices. Device drivers encapsulate device-dependent code and implement a standard interface in such a way that code contains device-specific register reads/writes. Device driver, is generally written by the device's manufacturer and delivered along with the device on a CD-ROM.

A device driver performs the following jobs −

  • To accept request from the device independent software above to it.
  • Interact with the device controller to take and give I/O and perform required error handling
  • Making sure that the request is executed successfully

How a device driver handles a request is as follows: Suppose a request comes to read a block N. If the driver is idle at the time a request arrives, it starts carrying out the request immediately. Otherwise, if the driver is already busy with some other request, it places the new request in the queue of pending requests.

Interrupt handlers

An interrupt handler, also known as an interrupt service routine or ISR, is a piece of software or more specifically a callback function in an operating system or more specifically in a device driver, whose execution is triggered by the reception of an interrupt.

When the interrupt happens, the interrupt procedure does whatever it has to in order to handle the interrupt, updates data structures and wakes up process that was waiting for an interrupt to happen.

Drivers

The interrupt mechanism accepts an address ─ a number that selects a specific interrupt handling routine/function from a small set. In most architectures, this address is an offset stored in a table called the interrupt vector table. This vector contains the memory addresses of specialized interrupt handlers.

Device-Independent I/O Software

The basic function of the device-independent software is to perform the I/O functions that are common to all devices and to provide a uniform interface to the user-level software. Though it is difficult to write completely device independent software but we can write some modules which are common among all the devices. Following is a list of functions of device-independent I/O Software −

  • Uniform interfacing for device drivers
  • Device naming - Mnemonic names mapped to Major and Minor device numbers
  • Device protection
  • Providing a device-independent block size
  • Buffering because data coming off a device cannot be stored in final destination.
  • Storage allocation on block devices
  • Allocation and releasing dedicated devices
  • Error Reporting

User-Space I/O Software

These are the libraries which provide richer and simplified interface to access the functionality of the kernel or ultimately interactive with the device drivers. Most of the user-level I/O software consists of library procedures with some exception like spooling system which is a way of dealing with dedicated I/O devices in a multiprogramming system.

I/O Libraries (e.g., stdio) are in user-space to provide an interface to the OS resident device-independent I/O SW. For example putchar(), getchar(), printf() and scanf() are example of user level I/O library stdio available in C programming.

Kernel I/O Subsystem

Kernel I/O Subsystem is responsible to provide many services related to I/O. Following are some of the services provided.

  • Scheduling − Kernel schedules a set of I/O requests to determine a good order in which to execute them. When an application issues a blocking I/O system call, the request is placed on the queue for that device. The Kernel I/O scheduler rearranges the order of the queue to improve the overall system efficiency and the average response time experienced by the applications.

  • Buffering − Kernel I/O Subsystem maintains a memory area known as buffer that stores data while they are transferred between two devices or between a device with an application operation. Buffering is done to cope with a speed mismatch between the producer and consumer of a data stream or to adapt between devices that have different data transfer sizes.

  • Caching − Kernel maintains cache memory which is region of fast memory that holds copies of data. Access to the cached copy is more efficient than access to the original.

  • Spooling and Device Reservation − A spool is a buffer that holds output for a device, such as a printer, that cannot accept interleaved data streams. The spooling system copies the queued spool files to the printer one at a time. In some operating systems, spooling is managed by a system daemon process. In other operating systems, it is handled by an in kernel thread.

  • Error Handling − An operating system that uses protected memory can guard against many kinds of hardware and application errors.

1.1. The simplest example¶

Here comes a very simple example of an input device driver. The device hasjust one button and the button is accessible at i/o port BUTTON_PORT. Whenpressed or released a BUTTON_IRQ happens. The driver could look like:

1.2. What the example does¶

First it has to include the <linux/input.h> file, which interfaces to theinput subsystem. This provides all the definitions needed.

In the _init function, which is called either upon module load or whenbooting the kernel, it grabs the required resources (it should also checkfor the presence of the device).

Then it allocates a new input device structure with input_allocate_device()and sets up input bitfields. This way the device driver tells the otherparts of the input systems what it is - what events can be generated oraccepted by this input device. Our example device can only generate EV_KEYtype events, and from those only BTN_0 event code. Thus we only set thesetwo bits. We could have used:

as well, but with more than single bits the first approach tends to beshorter.

Then the example driver registers the input device structure by calling:

This adds the button_dev structure to linked lists of the input driver andcalls device handler modules _connect functions to tell them a new inputdevice has appeared. input_register_device() may sleep and therefore mustnot be called from an interrupt or with a spinlock held.

While in use, the only used function of the driver is:

which upon every interrupt from the button checks its state and reports itvia the:

call to the input system. There is no need to check whether the interruptroutine isn’t reporting two same value events (press, press for example) tothe input system, because the input_report_* functions check thatthemselves.

Then there is the:

Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices Using

call to tell those who receive the events that we’ve sent a complete report.This doesn’t seem important in the one button case, but is quite importantfor for example mouse movement, where you don’t want the X and Y valuesto be interpreted separately, because that’d result in a different movement.

1.3. dev->open() and dev->close()¶

In case the driver has to repeatedly poll the device, because it doesn’thave an interrupt coming from it and the polling is too expensive to be doneall the time, or if the device uses a valuable resource (eg. interrupt), itcan use the open and close callback to know when it can stop polling orrelease the interrupt and when it must resume polling or grab the interruptagain. To do that, we would add this to our example driver:

Note that input core keeps track of number of users for the device andmakes sure that dev->open() is called only when the first user connectsto the device and that dev->close() is called when the very last userdisconnects. Calls to both callbacks are serialized.

The open() callback should return a 0 in case of success or any nonzero valuein case of failure. The close() callback (which is void) must always succeed.

1.4. Basic event types¶

The most simple event type is EV_KEY, which is used for keys and buttons.It’s reported to the input system via:

See uapi/linux/input-event-codes.h for the allowable values of code (from 0 toKEY_MAX). Value is interpreted as a truth value, ie any nonzero value means keypressed, zero value means key released. The input code generates events onlyin case the value is different from before.

Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices

In addition to EV_KEY, there are two more basic event types: EV_REL andEV_ABS. They are used for relative and absolute values supplied by thedevice. A relative value may be for example a mouse movement in the X axis.The mouse reports it as a relative difference from the last position,because it doesn’t have any absolute coordinate system to work in. Absoluteevents are namely for joysticks and digitizers - devices that do work in anabsolute coordinate systems.

Having the device report EV_REL buttons is as simple as with EV_KEY, simplyset the corresponding bits and call the:

function. Events are generated only for nonzero value.

However EV_ABS requires a little special care. Before callinginput_register_device, you have to fill additional fields in the input_devstruct for each absolute axis your device has. If our button device had alsothe ABS_X axis:

Or, you can just say:

This setting would be appropriate for a joystick X axis, with the minimum of0, maximum of 255 (which the joystick must be able to reach, no problem ifit sometimes reports more, but it must be able to always reach the min andmax values), with noise in the data up to +- 4, and with a center flatposition of size 8.

Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices Definition

If you don’t need absfuzz and absflat, you can set them to zero, which meanthat the thing is precise and always returns to exactly the center position(if it has any).

1.5. BITS_TO_LONGS(), BIT_WORD(), BIT_MASK()¶

These three macros from bitops.h help some bitfield computations:

1.6. The id* and name fields¶

The dev->name should be set before registering the input device by the inputdevice driver. It’s a string like ‘Generic button device’ containing auser friendly name of the device.

Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices Device

The id* fields contain the bus ID (PCI, USB, ...), vendor ID and device IDof the device. The bus IDs are defined in input.h. The vendor and device idsare defined in pci_ids.h, usb_ids.h and similar include files. These fieldsshould be set by the input device driver before registering it.

The idtype field can be used for specific information for the input devicedriver.

DeviceDevices

The id and name fields can be passed to userland via the evdev interface.

1.7. The keycode, keycodemax, keycodesize fields¶

These three fields should be used by input devices that have dense keymaps.The keycode is an array used to map from scancodes to input system keycodes.The keycode max should contain the size of the array and keycodesize thesize of each entry in it (in bytes).

Userspace can query and alter current scancode to keycode mappings usingEVIOCGKEYCODE and EVIOCSKEYCODE ioctls on corresponding evdev interface.When a device has all 3 aforementioned fields filled in, the driver mayrely on kernel’s default implementation of setting and querying keycodemappings.

1.8. dev->getkeycode() and dev->setkeycode()¶

Drivers Easteantimes Input Devices Input

getkeycode() and setkeycode() callbacks allow drivers to override defaultkeycode/keycodesize/keycodemax mapping mechanism provided by input coreand implement sparse keycode maps.

1.9. Key autorepeat¶

... is simple. It is handled by the input.c module. Hardware autorepeat isnot used, because it’s not present in many devices and even where it ispresent, it is broken sometimes (at keyboards: Toshiba notebooks). To enableautorepeat for your device, just set EV_REP in dev->evbit. All will behandled by the input system.

1.10. Other event types, handling output events¶

The other event types up to now are:

  • EV_LED - used for the keyboard LEDs.
  • EV_SND - used for keyboard beeps.

They are very similar to for example key events, but they go in the otherdirection - from the system to the input device driver. If your input devicedriver can handle these events, it has to set the respective bits in evbit,and also the callback routine:

This callback routine can be called from an interrupt or a BH (although thatisn’t a rule), and thus must not sleep, and must not take too long to finish.