Plug and play I2C slave
US6363437B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 7, 1999 |
| Grant date | Mar 26, 2002 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 7, 2019 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F12/0684
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
In accordance with embodiments of the invention, an electronic device including one or more controllers and one or more slave units is provided with a bus such as an I2C serial bus that connects the controllers and the slave units. The device further includes a secondary memory containing software drivers for a variety of different types of slave units, which can be present on the bus. The controller determines which types of slave units are actually present on the bus by sending, for each type of slave unit represented by a corresponding software driver in the secondary memory, a command via the bus using an address for the type. After determining which types of slave units are present on the bus, the controller loads corresponding software drivers from the secondary memory into a RAM, and using the loaded software drivers to initialize the slave units present on the bus.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.