MikroBUS Patches Being Worked On For Better Supporting These Add-On Boards Under Linux

MikroBUS is the open add-on board standard aiming for "maximum expandability with the smallest number of pins". MikroBUS already has fairly robust industry support particularly in the embedded space while finally a mikroBUS mainline kernel driver may be near for Linux to improve the status quo of driver support.

MikroBUS supports I2C, SPI, UART, PWM, reset, interrupt, +3.3V and +5V power, and other capabilities for this interface intended for embedded peripherals. Some mikroBUS add-on boards already have mainline Linux kernel support but due to DeviceTree handling and the like it's rather a support mess right now while this new patchwork should much improve the ecosystem.

Vaishnav M A of the Beagle Board project is working on a mikroBUS driver for add-on boards with the goal of seeing it mainlined. Vaishnav noted that around 140 of 750 mikroBUS add-on boards to date already support Linux albeit there isn't a mainline solution for enabling these boards at run-time. This new mikroBUS driver aims to overhaul that situation to avoid having to deal with messy DeviceTree overlays to instead using an extended version of the Greybus manifest.

Embedded developers and others interested in mikroBUS for Linux can see this patch series for all the details on this new driver that is currently flying under a "request for comments" flag.