Parallax selects Vinculum embedded USB host controller for datalogger application

Ken Gracey, Vice President, Parallax Inc comments, “The Vinculum IC provided us with the quickest and most functional solution to our development challenge. Prior to Vinculum, there were no standard solutions that allowed a microcontroller and PC to easily share data stored on a USB flash drive. Previously, we had to use smaller EEPROM devices with customised serial routines. Each approach was unique and required lots of custom coding. Now, our customers can use microcontrollers to log their sensor data across a wide variety of field-based applications.”

The VNC1L Vinculum IC is an embedded USB host microcontroller and supports the popular USB classes of mass storage, printer and human interface descriptor (HID). HID class devices typically include keyboards and mice. The device provides USB host capability to microcontroller-based products that previously did not have the hardware resources available. When interfacing to flash drives, Vinculum manages the file allocation table (FAT) structure by using a straightforward command set. It features two USB 2.0 low and full speed, host and slave ports, universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART), serial peripheral interface (SPI) and parallel first in first out (FIFO) interfaces.