Each and every IIO device, typically a hardware chip, has a device folder under /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX. Where X is the IIO index of the device. Under every of these directory folders reside a set of files, depending on the characteristics and features of the hardware device in question. These files are consistently generalized and documented in the IIO ABI documentation. In order to determine which IIO deviceX corresponds to which hardware device, the user can read the name file /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/name. In case the sequence in which the iio device drivers are loaded/registered is constant, the numbering is constant and may be known in advance.

If deviceX supports triggered sampling, it’s a so called trigger consumer and there will be an additional folder /sys/bus/iio/device/iio:deviceX/trigger. In this folder there is a file called current_trigger, allowing controlling and viewing the current trigger source connected to deviceX. Available trigger sources can be identified by reading the name file /sys/bus/iio/devices/triggerY/name. The same trigger source can connect to multiple devices, so a single trigger may initialize data capture or reading from a number of sensors, converters, etc.

Description: Read name of triggerY

root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/triggerY/> cat name
irqtrig56

Description: Make irqtrig56 (trigger using system IRQ56, likely a GPIO IRQ), to current trigger of deviceX

root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/trigger> echo irqtrig56 > current_trigger

Description: Read current trigger source of deviceX

root:/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/trigger> cat current_trigger
irqtrig56

The Industrial I/O subsystem provides support for various ring buffer based data acquisition methods. Apart from device specific hardware buffer support, the user can chose between two different software ring buffer implementations. One is the IIO lock free software ring, and the other is based on Linux kfifo. Devices with buffer support feature an additional sub-folder in the /sys/bus/iio/devices/deviceX/ folder hierarchy. Called deviceX:bufferY, where Y defaults to 0, for devices with a single buffer.

Every buffer implementation features a set of files:

length
Get/set the number of sample sets that may be held by the buffer.

enable
Enables/disables the buffer. This file should be written last, after length and selection of scan elements.

watermark
A single positive integer specifying the maximum number of scan elements to wait for. Poll will block until the watermark is reached. Blocking read will wait until the minimum between the requested read amount or the low water mark is available. Non-blocking read will retrieve the available samples from the buffer even if there are less samples then watermark level. This allows the application to block on poll with a timeout and read the available samples after the timeout expires and thus have a maximum delay guarantee.

data_available
A read-only value indicating the bytes of data available in the buffer. In the case of an output buffer, this indicates the amount of empty space available to write data to. In the case of an input buffer, this indicates the amount of data available for reading.

length_align_bytes
Using the high-speed interface. DMA buffers may have an alignment requirement for the buffer length. Newer versions of the kernel will report the alignment requirements associated with a device through the `length_align_bytes` property.

scan_elements
The scan_elements directory contains interfaces for elements that will be captured for a single triggered sample set in the buffer.

in_voltageX_en / in_voltageX-voltageY_en / timestamp_en:
Scan element control for triggered data capture. Writing 1 will enable the scan element, writing 0 will disable it

in_voltageX_type / in_voltageX-voltageY_type / timestamp_type:
Description of the scan element data storage within the buffer and therefore in the form in which it is read from user-space. Form is [s|u]bits/storage-bits. s or u specifies if signed (2's complement) or unsigned. bits is the number of bits of data and storage-bits is the space (after padding) that it occupies in the buffer. Note that some devices will have additional information in the unused bits so to get a clean value, the bits value must be used to mask the buffer output value appropriately. The storage-bits value also specifies the data alignment. So u12/16 will be a unsigned 12 bit integer stored in a 16 bit location aligned to a 16 bit boundary. For other storage combinations this attribute will be extended appropriately.

in_voltageX_index / in_voltageX-voltageY_index / timestamp_index:
A single positive integer specifying the position of this scan element in the buffer. Note these are not dependent on what is enabled and may not be contiguous. Thus for user-space to establish the full layout these must be used in conjunction with all _en attributes to establish which channels are present, and the relevant _type attributes to establish the data storage format.

• IIO mailing list: linux [dash] iio [at] vger [dot] kernel [dot] org
• IIO Linux Kernel Documentation sysfs-bus-iio-*
• IIO Documentation
• IIO test and visualization application
• libiio - IIO system library
• libiio - Internals
• Pointers and good books
• IIO High Speed
• Video from FOSDEM of how IIO is used in SDR applications
• libiio API introduction presentation video