USB Device Driver

Overview

The driver allows you to use ESP32-S2 chips to develop USB devices on a top of TinyUSB stack. TinyUSB is integrated with ESP-IDF to provide USB features of the framework. Using this driver the chip works as simple or composite device supporting several USB devices simultaneously.

TinyUSB stack is distributed via IDF Component Registry.

Our USB-OTG implementation is limited to 6 USB endpoints (5 IN/OUT endpoints and 1 IN endpoint) - find more information in technical reference manual.

Features

  • Configuration of device and string USB descriptors

  • USB Serial Device (CDC-ACM)

  • Input and output streams through USB Serial Device

  • Other USB classes (MIDI, MSC, HID…) support directly via TinyUSB

  • VBUS monitoring for self-powered devices

Hardware USB Connection

  • Any board with the ESP32-S2 chip with USB connectors or with exposed USB’s D+ and D- (DATA+/DATA-) pins.

If the board has no USB connector but has the pins, connect pins directly to the host (e.g. with do-it-yourself cable from any USB connection cable).

On ESP32-S2, connect GPIO 20 and 19 to D+/D- respectively:

Connection of an ESP board to a USB host

Self-powered devices must also connect VBUS through voltage divider or comparator, more details in Self-Powered Device subchapter.

Driver Structure

As the basis is used the TinyUSB stack.

On top of it the driver implements:

  • Customization of USB descriptors

  • Serial device support

  • Redirecting of standard streams through the Serial device

  • Encapsulated driver’s task servicing the TinyUSB

Configuration

Via Menuconfig options you can specify:

  • Several of descriptor’s parameters (see: Descriptors Configuration bellow)

  • USB Serial low-level Configuration

  • The verbosity of the TinyUSB’s log

  • Disable the TinyUSB main task (for the custom implementation)

Descriptors Configuration

The driver’s descriptors are provided by tinyusb_config_t structure’s device_descriptor, configuration_descriptor and string_descriptor members. Therefore, you should initialize tinyusb_config_t with your desired descriptors before calling tinyusb_driver_install() to install the driver.

However, the driver also provides default descriptors. You can install the driver with default device and string descriptors by setting the device_descriptor and string_descriptor members of tinyusb_config_t to NULL before calling tinyusb_driver_install(). To lower your development effort we also provide default configuration descriptor for CDC and MSC class, as these classes rarely require custom configuration. The driver’s default device descriptor is specified using Menuconfig, where the following fields should be configured:

  • PID

  • VID

  • bcdDevice

  • Manufacturer

  • Product name

  • Name of CDC device if it is On

  • Serial number

If you want to use your own descriptors with extended modification, you can define them during the driver installation process.

Install Driver

To initialize the driver, users should call tinyusb_driver_install(). The driver’s configuration is specified in a tinyusb_config_t structure that is passed as an argument to tinyusb_driver_install().

Note that the tinyusb_config_t structure can be zero initialized (e.g. const tinyusb_config_t tusb_cfg = { 0 };) or partially (as shown below). For any member that is initialized to 0 or NULL, the driver will use its default configuration values for that member (see example below)

const tinyusb_config_t partial_init = {
    .device_descriptor = NULL,  // Use default device descriptor specified in Menuconfig
    .string_descriptor = NULL,  // Use default string descriptors specified in Menuconfig
    .external_phy = false,      // Use internal USB PHY
    .configuration_descriptor = NULL, // Use default configuration descriptor according to settings in Menuconfig
};

Self-Powered Device

USB specification mandates self-powered devices to monitor voltage level on USB’s VBUS signal. As opposed to bus-powered devices, a self-powered device can be fully functional even without USB connection. The self-powered device detects connection and disconnection events by monitoring the VBUS voltage level. VBUS is considered valid if it rises above 4.75V and invalid if it falls below 4.35V.

No ESP32-S2 pin is 5V tolerant, so you must connect the VBUS to ESP32-S2 via a comparator with voltage thresholds as described above, or use a simple resistor voltage divider that will output (0.75 x Vdd) if VBUS is 4.4V (see figure below). In both cases, voltage on the sensing pin must be logic low within 3ms after the device is unplugged from USB host.

Simple voltage divider for VBUS monitoring

Simple voltage divider for VBUS monitoring

To use this feature, in tinyusb_config_t you must set self_powered to true and vbus_monitor_io to GPIO number that will be used for VBUS monitoring.

USB Serial Device (CDC-ACM)

If the CDC option is enabled in Menuconfig, the USB Serial Device can be initialized with tusb_cdc_acm_init() according to the settings from tinyusb_config_cdcacm_t (see example below).

const tinyusb_config_cdcacm_t acm_cfg = {
    .usb_dev = TINYUSB_USBDEV_0,
    .cdc_port = TINYUSB_CDC_ACM_0,
    .rx_unread_buf_sz = 64,
    .callback_rx = NULL,
    .callback_rx_wanted_char = NULL,
    .callback_line_state_changed = NULL,
    .callback_line_coding_changed = NULL
};
tusb_cdc_acm_init(&acm_cfg);

To specify callbacks you can either set the pointer to your tusb_cdcacm_callback_t function in the configuration structure or call tinyusb_cdcacm_register_callback() after initialization.

USB Serial Console

The driver allows to redirect all standard application streams (stdinm stdout, stderr) to the USB Serial Device and return them to UART using esp_tusb_init_console()/esp_tusb_deinit_console() functions.

Application Examples

The table below describes the code examples available in the directory peripherals/usb/.

Code Example

Description

peripherals/usb/device/tusb_console

How to set up ESP32-S2 chip to get log output via Serial Device connection

peripherals/usb/device/tusb_serial_device

How to set up ESP32-S2 chip to work as a USB Serial Device

peripherals/usb/device/tusb_midi

How to set up ESP32-S2 chip to work as a USB MIDI Device

peripherals/usb/device/tusb_hid

How to set up ESP32-S2 chip to work as a USB Human Interface Device