Can Raspberry Pi do this?

[Kiangara]

The situation;
We have a machine (CNC machine), the only way to communicate with this machine is through USB, we can put a USB memory in the machine and R/W files from this key.
We want to send programs directly to the machine without walking around with a usb key.

Is it possible to connect the machine with the USB port to the USB port on the Raspberry PI and can the machine through this port R/W to the USB memory?
We will also connect the Raspberry PI to the network, can a computer on the same network put files on the USB memory key?


Thanks in advance for your reply!

[Davespice]

Ah, I like the idea!

So the Raspberry Pi needs to spoof a USB media drive to the CNC machine but have the contents of this drive shared over the network via Samba/Windows Networking or Apple AFP etc. I'm sure this will be possible, but off the top of my head I wouldn't know how to do it. I presume it may involve some USB device driver programming which is way above my head. It's certainly not a beginner project, unless someone else has already done it.

I did find this on stack exchange though, seems similar to what you want to do.
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... age-device

And there is a previous post on this forum about it here;
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... f=8&t=4938

[PiGraham]

Did i read somewhere that the pi has full OTG USB hardware? It may one day work as a USB slave memory device, like a smart phone.
Probably requires clever low level code to do that though.

[mahjongg]

The broadcom SoC has OTG hardware, but on a model B the built in hub prevents it. There are also no OTG drivers for the PI.

[PiGraham]

Thanks Mahjong.

[ghans]

AFAIK OTG is impossible on both model A and B , because
some parts are missing. But device mode might be
possible.

ghans

[Kiangara]

Thanks four the answers!
My search continuous.

Thanks again for the quick replys!

[mahjongg]

AFAIK the "missing part" is simply a readout signal that tells the driver whether or not to use OTG mode, could be done using a dedicated GPIO pin. Still only possible on a model A.

[ghans]

Here is some more info on this "missing part" :
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 987#p52285
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 723#p54305

ghans