Re: Digi Watchport/T temperature sensor as /dev/ttyU

On Sun, 24 Jul 2016 13:12:35 -0600
Ian Lepore <ian_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 2016-07-24 at 12:52 -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Kevin Oberman <rkoberman_at_gmail.com>
> > wrote:  
> > > There are several different USB serial drivers. Off-hand I see
> > > ubser, ubsa,
> > > uchcom, ucom, ucycom, uftdi, ubgensa, umcs, umct, umoscom, uplcom,
> > > usb_serial, uslcom, and uvscom. Whether any of these will support
> > > the TI
> > > chip, I can't say. Most have man pages, but a few, as has been
> > > noted, are
> > > lacking one.  
> > 
> > I tried to automate discovery of these things. However, the only way
> > you can really know for sure about the TI chip is to read it's
> > datasheet
> > and compare that with extant drivers. It's actually easier than it
> > sounds.
> > 
> > I've often thought of unification of the TTY USB drivers, since they
> > are
> > most (but not all) based on the standard plus extra bits.
> > 
> > Warner  
> 
> To reiterate:  we do not have a driver for TI 5052 chips.
> 
> It's not much like other usb-serial chips.  In fact it's not strictly a
> usb-serial chip, it's a multifunction chip that includes a software
> -controllable usb hub, 2 serial ports, gpio, an i2c bus master, an MCU
> interface, a multichannel DMA controller, and apparently even has the
> ability to download your own 8052-compatible microcontroller code into
> the 5052 and have it take over from the built-in rom code.
> 
> It would be reasonable enough to write a driver that initially
> supported only the uart part of the chip.
> 
> -- Ian

Now, that I know that I can not use any of our plenty Digi Watchport/T sensors
with FreeBSD, I'm looking for a cheap alternative of sensor, prefereably being
capable of taking temperature and humidity and being accessed as easy as a
serial terminal - as the Digi Watchport/T does with Linux.

I still have a "resistance" changing the OS of our infrastructure to Linux due
to ZFS, but the very good support of drivers with the Linux OS is tempting ...