What is Suli

Sounds like a girl’s name? Actually it means Seeed Unified Library Interface. It’s a big thing on our to-do list in the near future.

We have hundreds of sensors, actuators, displays and other useful modules. In the past, we mainly focused on Arduino applications, and supplied Arduino Library only. This means if you used another platform such as Raspberry, LauchPad, or MCS51, you needed to port our Library, and sometimes it’s not easy.

Sometimes when some customers asked us to provide some libraries for a non-Arduino platform, what we could do was telling them “hey man, we only have Arduino library.” Replying the customers in this way made us feel bad.

And we have been thinking what if there’s a way to make our libraries fit all platforms. It’s really a hard task, but not impossible. And we are lucky to figure it out finally: it’s Suli – Seeed Unified Library Interface, which can make almost all of(at least 90%) our libraries fit many common platforms, or at least make it easy to port.

How does Suli works --------------------------- Have a look at the following image,

We can find that there are four circles and the innermost is HW(hardware). Suli will call resources from HW, such as GPIO, I2C, Timer and UART; then Suli-compatible Library, and then User Application. All of our Libraries will call Suli function only. Thus, for different platforms, we can just port Suli, then the Library can be used. That means different platforms have their Suli, Suli for Arudino, Suli for Mbed, Suli for….

Thres are serval points about Suli:

• Different platform have different Suli, it’s for a particular platform.
• Suli-compatible Library is platform independent.
• Suli-compatible Library will call the functon in Suli.

Suli has two files, Suli.h and Suli.cpp(.c). And Suli should implement the following function,

GPIO type:

typedef     int     IO_T;                           // IO type
typedef     int     PIN_T;                          // pin name
typedef     int     DIR_T;                          // pin direction
typedef int ANALOG_T;                               // pin analog

GPIO state:

#define HAL_PIN_INPUT   INPUT          // INPUT and OUTPUT was declared in Arduino IDE
#define HAL_PIN_OUTPUT  OUTPUT
#define HAL_PIN_HIGH    HIGH           // HIGH and LOW was declered in Arduino IDE
#define HAL_PIN_LOW     LOW

Data type:

typedef signed char     int8;
typedef unsigned char   uint8;
typedef signed short    int16;
typedef unsigned short  uint16;
typedef signed long     int32;
typedef unsigned long   uint32;

Digital IO Operation:

void suli_pin_init(IO_T *pio, PIN_T pin);      // pin initialize
void suli_pin_dir(IO_T *pio, DIR_T dir);       // set pin direction
void suli_pin_write(IO_T *pio, int16 state);   // write pin
int16 suli_pin_read(IO_T *pio);                // read pin
uint16 suli_pulse_in(IO_T *pio, uint8 state, uint32 timeout);

Analog IO Operation:

void suli_analog_init(ANALOG_T * aio, PIN_T pin);
int16 suli_analog_read(ANALOG_T * aio);

Delay:

void suli_delay_us(uint32 us);                 // delay us
void suli_delay_ms(uint32 ms);                 // delay ms

Times:

uint32 suli_millis(void);
uint32 suli_micros(void);

I2C Interface:

void suli_i2c_init(void * i2c_device);
uint8 suli_i2c_write(void * i2c_device, uint8 dev_addr, uint8 *data, uint8 len);
uint8 suli_i2c_read(void * i2c_device, uint8 dev_addr, uint8 *buff, uint8 *len);

UART:

void suli_uart_init(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint32 baud);
void suli_uart_send(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint8 *data, uint16 len);
void suli_uart_send_byte(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num, uint8 data);
uint8 suli_uart_read_byte(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num);
uint16 suli_uart_readable(void * uart_device, int16 uart_num);

You can find that Suli include digital IO operation, analog IO operation, I2C, and Uart function, maybe it’s not very comprehensive, but base on my experience, it’s enought for quite a lot of our libraries, of curse if we find that we need more funciton someday, we’ll add to it.

How to use a Suli-Compatible Library

We'll provide more and more Suli-Compatible Library, and we believe that all Seeed's Library will be Suli-Compatible in the short future.

Frst of all, you should download a a Suli-Compatible Library. For example, there's a ACC_Adxl345_Suli

Then, for different platform there are different operation.

For Arduino

For Arduino Users, use a Suli-Compatible Library is just like you use the other library. What is different is you should put Sul_Arduino to your Library folder, Remember, just Suli_Arduino.

For Other

Now we have Suli for Arduno, Mbed and JN516x, and we will have Suli for many platform. You can download Suli for your platform. Then the thing left is easy.

Click here for more details.

What is next --------------------------- Our plan is to make all Seeed libraries Suli compatible and porting Suli of some common platforms. These platforms will include Arduino, Mbed, Mesh Bee, Raspberry, LaunchPad in the first stage. This work is expected be finished before June. Stay tuned

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This code is written by luweicong@seeedstudio.com for seeed studio
and is licensed under The MIT License. Check License.txt for more information.

Seeed Studio is an open hardware facilitation company based in Shenzhen, China.
Benefiting from local manufacture power and convenient global logistic system,
we integrate resources to serve new era of innovation. Seeed also works with
global distributors and partners to push open hardware movement.