What are custom device drivers?

Best Answer

Answer by Anil Sagar @ Google · Jun 22, 2015 at 11:57 AM

A zetta custom device driver / zetta device driver can be defined as follows,

Zetta Device driver is modelling a hardware device / software feature into state machine model which allows you to read data or control the device using zetta server.
Zetta Device Driver consists of logic that will be used to control or read data from device that is connected to zetta server.
For Example, In case of LED, Device states like on , off and Device transitions like turn-on and turn-off, device actions like blink, turnOnAlternative, turnOn, turnOff logic is defined and written inside zetta device driver for led.
Zetta Server converts device into APIs using the zetta device driver.
Zetta drivers are created for specific devices on specific platforms.
For Example , zetta-led-edison-driver is used to control led connected to Intel Edison Platform.
It's a nodejs module that can be downloaded using npm.
Zetta Drivers are written using nodejs (Javascript)

Zetta drivers can be contributed back to the community, those drivers are called as Contributed Zetta Device Drivers. If a zetta driver for a specific platform is not available in the community then you will write a driver yourself for your needs, those drivers can be called as custom zetta device drivers.

For more information related to zetta driver see articles Anatomy of a Zetta Driver and Zetta Device Reference Docs.

Cheers,

Anil Sagar

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Ravi Shah

· Mar 28, 2016 at 07:02 AM 0

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Hi @Anil Sagar ,

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Can I say the Zetta Driver will expose the "core" capabilities of the device as APIs ?

With specifically LED Driver, I was expecting only "on" and "off" operations exposed by drivers keeping the duration as additional configurable param. The Apps may create other combinations as per their requirements anyway.

So, my targeted question is -- Do we provide more featureful drivers or keep it to the core of the devices only ?

Anil Sagar @ Google ♦♦ Ravi Shah

· Mar 28, 2016 at 07:05 AM 0

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@Ravi Shah , That's correct. You can provide more featureful drivers not only specific to the core of the devices. For Example, You can provide features like pulse, turn-on-alternative, flash as additional APIs on top of simple on-off for an LED.

You can implement additional features along with core features in a device driver and expose same as an API.