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This version (05 Feb 2021 13:32) was approved by Michael Hennerich.The Previously approved version (28 Jan 2021 10:38) is available.
This version (05 Feb 2021 13:32) was approved by Michael Hennerich.The Previously approved version (28 Jan 2021 10:38) is available.This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
This page contains a few lose documentation snippets used in various spots.
IIO device files
Each and every IIO device, typically a hardware chip, has a device folder under /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX. Where X is the IIO index of the device. Under every of these directory folders reside a set of files, depending on the characteristics and features of the hardware device in question. These files are consistently generalized and documented in the IIO ABI documentation. In order to determine which IIO deviceX corresponds to which hardware device, the user can read the name file /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/name. In case the sequence in which the iio device drivers are loaded/registered is constant, the numbering is constant and may be known in advance.
IIO devices with trigger consumer interface
If deviceX supports triggered sampling, it’s a so called trigger consumer and there will be an additional folder /sys/bus/iio/device/iio:deviceX/trigger. In this folder there is a file called current_trigger, allowing controlling and viewing the current trigger source connected to deviceX. Available trigger sources can be identified by reading the name file /sys/bus/iio/devices/triggerY/name. The same trigger source can connect to multiple devices, so a single trigger may initialize data capture or reading from a number of sensors, converters, etc.
Trigger Consumers:
Currently triggers are only used for the filling of software ring
buffers and as such any device supporting INDIO_RING_TRIGGERED has the
consumer interface automatically created.
Description: Read name of triggerY
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/triggerY/> cat name irqtrig56
Description: Make irqtrig56 (trigger using system IRQ56, likely a GPIO IRQ), to current trigger of deviceX
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/trigger> echo irqtrig56 > current_trigger
Description: Read current trigger source of deviceX
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/trigger> cat current_trigger irqtrig56
Standalone trigger drivers
| name | description |
|---|---|
| iio-trig-gpio | Provides support for using GPIO pins as IIO triggers. |
| iio-trig-rtc | Provides support for using periodic capable real time clocks as IIO triggers. |
| iio-trig-sysfs | Provides support for using SYSFS entry as IIO triggers. |
| iio-trig-bfin-timer | Provides support for using a Blackfin timer as IIO triggers. |
Buffer management
The Industrial I/O subsystem provides support for various ring buffer based data acquisition methods. Apart from device specific hardware buffer support, the user can chose between two different software ring buffer implementations. One is the IIO lock free software ring, and the other is based on Linux kfifo. Devices with buffer support feature an additional sub-folder in the /sys/bus/iio/devices/deviceX/ folder hierarchy. Called deviceX:bufferY, where Y defaults to 0, for devices with a single buffer.
Every buffer implementation features a set of files:
length
Get/set the number of sample sets that may be held by the buffer.
enable
Enables/disables the buffer. This file should be written last, after length and selection of scan elements.
watermark
A single positive integer specifying the maximum number of scan
elements to wait for.
Poll will block until the watermark is reached.
Blocking read will wait until the minimum between the requested
read amount or the low water mark is available.
Non-blocking read will retrieve the available samples from the
buffer even if there are less samples then watermark level. This
allows the application to block on poll with a timeout and read
the available samples after the timeout expires and thus have a
maximum delay guarantee.
data_available
A read-only value indicating the bytes of data available in the
buffer. In the case of an output buffer, this indicates the
amount of empty space available to write data to. In the case of
an input buffer, this indicates the amount of data available for
reading.
length_align_bytes
Using the high-speed interface. DMA buffers may have an alignment requirement for the buffer length.
Newer versions of the kernel will report the alignment requirements
associated with a device through the `length_align_bytes` property.
scan_elements
The scan_elements directory contains interfaces for elements that will be captured for a single triggered sample set in the buffer.
Typical ADC scan elements
in_voltageX_en / in_voltageX-voltageY_en / timestamp_en:
Scan element control for triggered data capture.
Writing 1 will enable the scan element, writing 0 will disable it
in_voltageX_type / in_voltageX-voltageY_type / timestamp_type:
Description of the scan element data storage within the buffer
and therefore in the form in which it is read from user-space.
Form is [s|u]bits/storage-bits. s or u specifies if signed
(2's complement) or unsigned. bits is the number of bits of
data and storage-bits is the space (after padding) that it
occupies in the buffer. Note that some devices will have
additional information in the unused bits so to get a clean
value, the bits value must be used to mask the buffer output
value appropriately. The storage-bits value also specifies the
data alignment. So u12/16 will be a unsigned 12 bit integer
stored in a 16 bit location aligned to a 16 bit boundary.
For other storage combinations this attribute will be extended
appropriately.
in_voltageX_index / in_voltageX-voltageY_index / timestamp_index:
A single positive integer specifying the position of this
scan element in the buffer. Note these are not dependent on
what is enabled and may not be contiguous. Thus for user-space
to establish the full layout these must be used in conjunction
with all _en attributes to establish which channels are present,
and the relevant _type attributes to establish the data storage
format.
Event Management
The Industrial I/O subsystem provides support for passing hardware generated events up to userspace.
In IIO events are not used for passing normal readings from the sensing devices to userspace, but rather for out of band information. Normal data reaches userspace through a low overhead character device - typically via either software or hardware buffer. The stream format is pseudo fixed, so is described and controlled via sysfs rather than adding headers to the data describing what is in it.
Pretty much all IIO events correspond to thresholds on some value derived from one or more raw readings from the sensor. They are provided by the underlying hardware.
Examples include:
- Straight crossing a voltage threshold
- Moving average crosses a threshold
- Motion detectors (lots of ways of doing this).
- Thresholds on sum squared or rms values.
- Rate of change thresholds.
- Lots more variants…
Events have timestamps.
The Interface:
- Single user at a time.
- Simple chrdev per device (aggregation across devices doesn't really make sense for IIO as you tend to really care which sensor caused the event rather than just that it happened.)
The format is:
/** * struct iio_event_data - The actual event being pushed to userspace * @id: event identifier * @timestamp: best estimate of time of event occurrence (often from * the interrupt handler) */ struct iio_event_data { u64 id; s64 timestamp; };
Typical event attributes
/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/events
Configuration of which hardware generated events are passed up
to user-space.
- Threshold Events:
<type>Z[_name]_thresh[_rising|falling]_en
Event generated when channel passes a threshold in the specified
(_rising|_falling) direction. If the direction is not specified,
then either the device will report an event which ever direction
a single threshold value is called in (e.g.
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_thresh_value) or
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_thresh_rising_value and
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_thresh_falling_value may take
different values, but the device can only enable both thresholds
or neither.
Note the driver will assume the last p events requested are
to be enabled where p is however many it supports (which may
vary depending on the exact set requested. So if you want to be
sure you have set what you think you have, check the contents of
these attributes after everything is configured. Drivers may
have to buffer any parameters so that they are consistent when
a given event type is enabled a future point (and not those for
whatever event was previously enabled).
<type>Z[_name]_thresh[_rising|falling]_value
Specifies the value of threshold that the device is comparing
against for the events enabled by
<type>Z[_name]_thresh[_rising|falling]_en.
If separate attributes exist for the two directions, but
direction is not specified for this attribute, then a single
threshold value applies to both directions.
The raw or input element of the name indicates whether the
value is in raw device units or in processed units (as _raw
and _input do on sysfs direct channel read attributes).
- Rate of Change Events:
<type>[Z][_name]_roc[_rising|falling]_en
Event generated when channel passes a threshold on the rate of
change (1st differential) in the specified (_rising|_falling)
direction. If the direction is not specified, then either the
device will report an event which ever direction a single
threshold value is called in (e.g.
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_roc_value) or
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_roc_rising_value and
<type>[Z][_name]_<raw|input>_roc_falling_value may take
different values, but the device can only enable both rate of
change thresholds or neither.
Note the driver will assume the last p events requested are
to be enabled where p is however many it supports (which may
vary depending on the exact set requested. So if you want to be
sure you have set what you think you have, check the contents of
these attributes after everything is configured. Drivers may
have to buffer any parameters so that they are consistent when
a given event type is enabled a future point (and not those for
whatever event was previously enabled).
<type>[Z][_name]_roc[_rising|falling]_value
Specifies the value of rate of change threshold that the
device is comparing against for the events enabled by
<type>[Z][_name]_roc[_rising|falling]_en.
If separate attributes exist for the two directions,
but direction is not specified for this attribute,
then a single threshold value applies to both directions.
The raw or input element of the name indicates whether the
value is in raw device units or in processed units (as _raw
and _input do on sysfs direct channel read attributes).
- Magnitude Events:
<type>Z[_name]_mag[_rising|falling]_en
Similar to in_accel_x_thresh[_rising|_falling]_en, but here the
magnitude of the channel is compared to the threshold, not its
signed value.
<type>Z[_name]_mag[_rising|falling]_value
The value to which the magnitude of the channel is compared. If
number or direction is not specified, applies to all channels of
this type.
- Temporal Conditions:
<type>[Z][_name][_thresh|_roc][_rising|falling]_period
Period of time (in seconds) for which the condition must be
met before an event is generated. If direction is not
specified then this period applies to both directions.
Low level register access via debugfs (direct_reg_access)
Some IIO drivers feature an optional debug facility, allowing users to read or write registers directly. Special care needs to be taken when using this feature, since you can modify registers on the back of the driver.
To simplify direct register access you may want to use the libiio iio_reg command line utility.
Accessing debugfs requires root privileges.
In order to identify if the IIO device in question feature this option you first need to identify the IIO device number.
Therefore read the name attribute of each IIO device
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root@analog:~# grep "" /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio\:device*/name /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/name:ad7291 /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device1/name:ad9361-phy /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device2/name:xadc /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device3/name:adf4351-udc-rx-pmod /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device4/name:adf4351-udc-tx-pmod /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device5/name:cf-ad9361-dds-core-lpc /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device6/name:cf-ad9361-lpc root@analog:~#
Change directory to /sys/kernel/debug/iio/ iio:deviceX and check if the direct_reg_access file exists.
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root@analog:~# cd /sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio\:device1 root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device1# ls direct_reg_access direct_reg_access
Reading
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device1# echo 0x7 > direct_reg_access root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device1# cat direct_reg_access 0x40
Writing
Write ADDRESS VALUE
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device1# echo 0x7 0x50 > direct_reg_access root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device1# cat direct_reg_access 0x50
Accessing HDL CORE registers
Special ADI device driver convention for devices that have both:
- a SPI/I2C control interface
- and some sort of HDL Core with registers (AXI)
In this case when accessing the HDL Core Registers always set BIT31.
The register map for typical ADI HDL cores can be found here: Register Map
This specifies any shell prompt running on the target
root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device6# echo 0x80000000 > direct_reg_access root@analog:/sys/kernel/debug/iio/iio:device6# cat direct_reg_access 0x80062
IIO pointers
- IIO mailing list: linux [dash] iio [at] vger [dot] kernel [dot] org
/srv/wiki.analog.com/data/pages/software/linux/docs/iio/iio_snippets.txt · Last modified: 01 Nov 2022 14:59 by Robin Getz