Here we are happy to announce Suli, our plan of open hardware module libraries for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, mbed and etc.

What is Suli?

Sounds like a girl’s name? Actually it means Seeed Unified Library Interface. It’s a big thing on our to-do list in the near future.

We have hundreds of sensors, actuators, displays and other useful modules. In the past, we mainly focused on Arduino applications, and supplied Arduino Library only. This means if you used another platform such as Raspberry, LauchPad, or MCS51, you needed to port our Library, and sometimes it’s not easy.

Sometimes when some customers asked us to provide some libraries for a non-Arduino platform, what we could do was telling them “hey man, we only have Arduino library.” Replying the customers in this way made us feel bad.

And we have been thinking what if there’s a way to make our libraries fit all platforms. It’s really a hard task, but not impossible. And we are lucky to figure it out finally: it’s Suli – Seeed Unified Library Interface, which can make almost all of(at least 90%) our libraries fit many common platforms, or at least make it easy to port.

How does Suli work?

Let’s have a look at the following image

We can find that there are four circles and the innermost is HW(hardware). Suli will call resources from HW, such as GPIO, I2C, Timer and UART; then Suli-compatible Library, and then User Application. All of our Libraries will call Suli function only. Thus, for different platforms, we can just port Suli, then the Library can be used. That means different platforms have their Suli, Suli for Arudino, Suli for Mbed, Suli for….

There are several points about Suli:

l  Different platform has its equivalent Suli.

l  Suli-compatible Library is platform independent.

l  Suli-compatible Library will call the function in Suli.

Suli has two files, Suli.h and Suli.cpp(.c). And Suli should implement the following function, which will be called by

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GPIO type:

typedef     int     IO_T;                           // IO type

typedef     int     PIN_T;                          // pin name

typedef     int     DIR_T;                          // pin direction

typedef int ANALOG_T;                               // pin analog

GPIO state:

#define HAL_PIN_INPUT   INPUT                       // INPUT and OUTPUT was declared in Arduino IDE

#define HAL_PIN_OUTPUT  OUTPUT

#define HAL_PIN_HIGH    HIGH                        // HIGH and LOW was declered in Arduino IDE

#define HAL_PIN_LOW     LOW

Data type:

typedef signed char     int8;

typedef unsigned char   uint8;

typedef signed short    int16;

typedef unsigned short  uint16;

typedef signed long     int32;

typedef unsigned long   uint32;

Digital IO Operation:

void seeed_hal_pin_init(IO_T *pio, PIN_T pin);      // pin initialize

void seeed_hal_pin_dir(IO_T *pio, DIR_T dir);       // set pin direction

void seeed_hal_pin_write(IO_T *pio, int16 state);   // write pin

int16 seeed_hal_pin_read(IO_T *pio);                // read pin

uint16 seeed_hal_pulse_in(IO_T *pio, uint8 state, uint32 timeout);

Analog IO Operation:

void seeed_hal_analog_init(ANALOG_T * aio, PIN_T pin);

int16 seeed_hal_analog_read(ANALOG_T * aio);

Delay

void seeed_hal_delay_us(uint32 us);                 // delay us

void seeed_hal_delay_ms(uint32 ms);                 // delay ms

Times

uint32 seeed_hal_millis(void);

uint32 seeed_hal_micros(void);

I2C Interface:

void seeed_hal_i2c_init(void * i2c_device);

uint8 seeed_hal_i2c_write(void * i2c_device, uint8 dev_addr, uint8 *data, uint8 len);

uint8 seeed_hal_i2c_read(void * i2c_device, uint8 dev_addr, uint8 *buff, uint8 *len);

UART:

void seeed_hal_uart_init(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint32 baud);

void seeed_hal_uart_send(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint8 *data, uint16 len);

void seeed_hal_uart_send_byte(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint8 data);

uint8 seeed_hal_uart_read_byte(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num);

uint16 seeed_hal_uart_readable(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num);

You can find that Suli includes digital IO operation, analog IO operation, I2C, and Uart function. It’s not very comprehensive, but based on our experience, it’s enough for many of our libraries. Of course if we find that we need more functions someday, we’ll add to it.

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What is next？

Our plan is to make all Seeed libraries Suli compatible and porting Suli of some common platforms. These platforms will include Arduino, Mbed, Mesh Bee, Raspberry, LaunchPad in the first stage. This work is expected be finished before June. Stay tuned 😀

For more information, please refer to https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Suli

Written by Loovee

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