I know it may not interest others, but I am interested in building my own usb flash drive. Just to say I did it if nothing else. I was wondering what it would take to build a few. I know it would need the FTDI chip (possible pre-soldered to a PCB), and of course flash memory, but what else is needed?
If they make mp3 player kits, why not a flash drive kit?
I see this kit as a starting point for building small didital cameras as well (attach a cell phone cmos…). and also, for those of us who like to mod everything we own, a chance to make a custom flash drive that can conform to the shape we may want (not necessarily a straight brick).
I know there may not be much interest in this but I though it would be neat, and I know I would buy a few of them…
which FTDI chip? The Vinculum? There are better ways to do it. The Vinculum is limited to full speed USB (12Mbps) IIRC, so if you wanted to deal with files of any largish size it would be too slow.
Cypress makes an FX2 type chip that is designed for this purpose, maybe that would be better.
mpanetta, Thanks I didn’t know about the down sides to FTDI (part of why I’d like to have a kit built)
After looking at the cypress website and searching out from there, I found a lot of information on actually how to design the PCB for a USB Flash drive
From what I gather (and I know I am simplifying it…) all you need component wise are:
-24mhz crystal (xtal)
-a 3.3v voltage regulator
-smd LED’s (optional for confirming data transmitting)
-NAND memory chip
-USB control chip
-a few resistors for proper pull up or pull down voltages
-properly designed PCB
programming the chip and memory would still be an issue. I haven’t found much on that yet (but then again I haven’t fully read every thing I pointed out either)
Aside from being small (very small), the components for a kit don’t seem very over whelming.
I don’t know much about the NX2 (Have not checked out the datasheet yet) but if its anything like the FX2, it will be programmed over USB using loader software either you write (not too difficult, at least in linux) or something you find.
As for a compiler, I think SDCC has a port for the 8051, which is the core used. Do a search for SDCC FX2 or something and you should find something. When I worked with the FX2 professionally, I used the Keil tools, but they are VERY (IMO) expensive…
And on a side note… I really wish the FX2 devel kit were not so damn expensive (its $400 last I checked) else they would have more hobbyiests using it IMO. Its a damn nice chip, and until recently (within the last year for the most part) the only available micro with a USB2.0 HS device port on it.