Success! I have managed to write and compile firmware for the FTDI Vinculum-II (VNC2) USB host IC so I can read HID reports from a Saitek Cyborg EVO joystick, parse the data into values for the X, Y, rotation and throttle axes and button states and transmit any change in values by UART which can be received by an MCU.
This is what I did:
First, I got a V2DIP1-32 development module. This is basically a VNC2 (the 32-pin version) on a PCB along with a 12 MHz crystal, a USB A socket, a 3.3 V voltage regulator, an LED and a couple of capacitors and resistors. In other words, only basic support components.
Next, I installed the Vinculum-II Toolchain (the development IDE) version 2.0.0 and then updated to SP1.
The IDE works ok. Especially the application wizard works well and gives you a good starting point for your own firmware by adding the necessary libraries, headers and scaffolding code based on your selection of IC, USB ports in use and required drivers.
But the IDE is Windows-only software… *sigh* I hate that. Fortunately I have my old MacBook Pro with Windows 7 on a Bootcamp partition.
To flash the compiled firmware onto the chip I used FT-Prog
and a FTDI TTL-232R-3V3 cable connected to the VNC2 as described in this application note.
Note: you don't need the VNC2 Debugger/Programmer Module to flash the VNC2 – the USB-to-UART cable is sufficient – even though the FTDI website states that the Debugger/Programmer module is required for initial programming.
On to the firmware itself. I did start by wasting a couple of hours by not reading the VNC2 dev board's datasheet closely enough to notice that the USB socket on the board is connected to USB port 2 and not – as I figured – port 1. After tweaking the supplied example project 'USBHostHID' and reading the documentation I pretty quickly had some firmware that did what I wanted: wait for a HID device with the specified VID/PID to be connected, read HID data, parse the data into corresponding X, Y, Rz, Z and button values and, if any values change, send the new values over the UART connection.
Here's the complete firmware project (including compiled .rom file).
And here is a sample dump of the UART output. If a line starts with a "S" it is a status message, if it starts with "E" it is an error message and otherwise it is a value update.
If you want to use this project to read data from your own joystick (and it's not a Saitek Cyborg EVO), you'll have to change:
- The VID/PID for the joystick:
// find VID/PID of Saitek Cyborg EVO device
hc_ioctVidPid.vid = 0x06a3;
hc_ioctVidPid.pid = 0x0464; - The
parse_hidmethod to match your own joystick's HID descriptor.
Ravi 
Poonam Pipaliya 
Priyanka Patel 
Mark 
Anders Gustafsson
Hello,
I just work with the Vinculum 2, too an have a problem to reed out continues data. I`m using a logitech gamepad F710 and every time I can just read out one correct sequence of data, stored in the buffer for parsing, the following sequences will about with the status error 0x0a. I have no clue where the problem is. May be you have more experience and can help me to fix my problem. Thanks David