Host controller

FTDI is claimed to make it easier to provide USB capability on existing or new embedded designs with its Vinculum VNC1L USB host controller IC and modules.

The initial product member of the family is the VNC1L device with two USB ports which can be individually configured by firmware as host or slave ports.

There are various ways to use the controller. It can be connected via USB flash drives to MCUs via the UART, SPI or parallel FIFO interfaces. USB device classes including mass storage, printer and HID devices or FTDI’s own range of USB-UART and USB-FIFO ICs can be connected to an embedded system.

VNC1L features include: 8/32 bit V-MCU core; dual DMA controllers for hardware acceleration; 64 k embedded flash program memory; 4 k internal data SRAM; 2 x USB 2.0 slow/full speed host/slave ports; UART, SPI and parallel FIFO interfaces; PS2 legacy keyboard and mouse interfaces; up to 28 GPIO pins depending on configuration; 3.3 V operation with 5 V safe inputs; low power operation (25 mA running/2 mA standby); firmware easily updated in the field; LQFP-48 RoHS compliant package; multi-processor configuration capable.

The company has also developed various modules for prototyping and evaluation: V-Eval (development board based on the VNC1L); VDIP (DIP format VNC1L USB host controller development); VF2F (digital media backup to USB flash drive – reference design); VDRIVE (adds USB flash drive interface to MCU I/F via UART or SPI interface); VMUSIC (adds USB flash drive interface plus MP3 playback to MCU I/F via UART or SPI interface); DLP-VLOG (allows data logging directly to a USB flash drive using a VNC1L device with a microcontroller).