ClickID opens up possibility of Linux development growth
A hardware/software open source solution, ClickID has been announced by MikroElektronika. It enables many hundreds of Click boards to be hot-plugged into Linux development environment, said the company, to the delight of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation: “ClickID…is a big step enabling users of…BeagleBoard.org BeaglePlay to simply use the well tested code…without needing to search and integrate, just connect and play!”
ClickID is a hardware/software open source solution based on a one-wire device that enables hot-plugging of Click or any other mikroBUS-compatible add-on peripheral board to development boards running embedded Linux or similar OS.
ClickID brings a new level of automation and self-diagnosis to embedded tools, said MikroElektronika. When integrated with Click boards on an embedded system, it facilitates more complex operations, allowing software to identify add-on board peripheral configurations. A ClickID demo library at github is available for use on any MIKROE development system. This demonstrates how to read, write, and process data from the ClickID. Additionally, the full application code and ready-to-use projects can be easily installed from NECTO Studio Package Manager, downloaded from LibStock, or found on Mikroe’s GitHub account.
Nebojsa Matic, CEO of Mikroe, commented: “Click boards have always featured the standardised mikroBUS sockets which represented a big step forward in the embedded industry as it enabled embedded boards to be more modular and easily upgradable by quickly adding and changing hardware in the form of mikroBUS-compatible add-on boards such as Clicks. Now, by adding HW/SW support that is automatically recognised by popular OS, such as Linux, we have eliminated the challenge of configuring a huge range of devices at boot-time with device trees, which is time-consuming and error-prone.”
For Linux-based systems like BeaglePlay, ClickID simplifies the addition and operation of peripheral add-on boards. It communicates with the operating system kernel using the 1-Wire protocol, enabling automatic recognition of silicon ICs on add-on boards. It delivers manifest files to the operating system, facilitating the loading of appropriate drivers for interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, PWM, ADC.
