Question

I want to access an SPI device (an optical mouse device from Avago Tech) on an embedded Linux system using the SPIDEV driver. The device is connected to SPI0.

I enabled SPI and “User mode SPI device driver support” in menuconfig > “Device Drivers” > “SPI”.

I added the code to the board.c file

static struct spi_board_info spidev_board_info[] {
    {
        .modalias = "spidev",
        .max_speed_hz = 1000000,
        .bus_num = 1,
        .chips_select = 0,
        .mode = SPI_MODE_3,
    },
    {
        .modalias = "spidev",
        .max_speed_hz = 1000000,
        .bus_num = 1,
        .chips_select = 1,
        .mode = SPI_MODE_3,
    },
};
spi_register_board_info(spidev_board_info, ARRAY_SIZE(spidev_board_info));

I tried both 500000 and 1000000 as max_speed_hz (1Mhz being the highest allowed by the sensor). SPI_MODE_3 is correct, checked on the datasheet. bus_num = 1 should correct as it refers to SPI0 (I also tried = 0 out of curiosity).

I checked the electrical connections and are all working.

The kernel compiles and the image starts correctly, but I cannot find any device in /sys/class/spidev/ (neither in /sys/bus/spi/…). No reference to SPI appears during system boot either.

Any idea on where the problem can be?

Answer 1

I think that with the Atmel boards, you are supposed to register the devices with the at91_add_device_spi function. It would then be:

at91_add_device_spi(spidev_board_info, ARRAY_SIZE(spidev_board_info));

At least you have to make sure that this function gets called by your board support file board-sam9x5ek.c so that the SPI master controller gets initialized. If this is done, your above proposed initialization is correct.