Velleman K8055 USB interface board

An inexpensive digital and analog interface for connection to a computer via USB.

The official device driver is for windows only, but after the release of the first open source driver by Nicholas Sutre: http://linuxk8055.free.fr/ or http://freshmeat.net/projects/linuxk8055/ there has been an increasing level of unofficial Linux support.

The Julien Etelain and Edward Nys version was simplified, it only required a C compiler instead of C++ and it could be compiled without a "make" tool. http://soft.pmad.net/k8055/ This version also gained a simple output format consisting of a single line of numbers delimited by semicolons.

Sven Lindberg repackages the program as a linkable library: http://libk8055.sourceforge.net/ with a command line version that looks equivalent to the Etelain and Nys version.

Mohawksoft http://www.mohawksoft.org/ claim to have their own version but it's only available via CVS.

I'm going to concentrate on the Julien Etelain and Edward Nys version due to the ease of compilation.

We can download the source straight to the slug:

root@zebidee:~# wget http://soft.pmad.net/files/k8055/k8055-utbm-src-0.3.tbz
Connecting to soft.pmad.net[213.251.187.10]:80
k8055-utbm-src-0.3.t 100% |*****************************| 5795 00:00 ETA
root@zebidee:~#

Unpack it using the built in "tar":

root@zebidee:~# tar -xjf k8055-utbm-src-0.3.tbz
root@zebidee:~#

Now you need a working C compiler:

Getting a C compiler

Change to the k8055_src directory and you can compile the program:

root@zebidee:~# cd k8055_src
root@zebidee:~/k8055_src# ./build_linux
/usr/lib/gcc/armeb-linux/3.4.4/../../../../armeb-linux/bin/ld: Warning: /tmp/ccIQhKOI.o does not support interworking, whereas k8055 does
root@zebidee:~/k8055_src#

Note I always get that warning, I think it's safe to ignore.

Try to run the program:

If there's no device present:

root@zebidee:~/k8055_src# ./k8055
Could not find the XSV device
Please ensure that the device is correctly connected.
root@zebidee:~/k8055_src#

If the k8055 board is connected:

root@zebidee:~/k8055_src# ./k8055
28;0;118;135;0;0
root@zebidee:~/k8055_src#