Tags: Electronic Circuit, Embedded, I2C, Microcontroller, RS232

Development of a fully capable Microchip PIC development board that includes various kinds of peripherals: keypad, LCD screen, USB, infra-red, RF, RS232 UART, I2C, SPI, SMBus.

Why do you need development kit?

When you develop a product with a micro-processor in its core, you should first plan what kind of peripherals you are going to use, and then set everything up manually. In most cases, the peripherals will be one or more of the following:

• Input devices – Keypad, Switches, Push-buttons, etc.
• Output devices – LCD display, 7-segment display, LED’s, voice output, etc
• Communication ports — way to connect your system to other hardware systems or computer such as: USB 2.0, Serial RS232 port, Ethernet and more.
• Sensors and analog inputs — such as temperature sensor, volume sensor, voice input
• Power Supply Unit – to transfer the input voltage to the consumption requirements of each one of the sub-units in the system.

Therefore, a diagram of such system will look like:

When designing a product, one of the most important steps is determine those devices (what you need for your specific product), Designing the schematics of the electric circuit and the connections to the Micro-controller. Development kit contains most of those devices and therefore improve the development process. Benefits:

1. Saves the exhausting work of building the circuit on a matrix board.
2. Saves wrong connection mistakes that can waist a lot of time or even burning the micro-controller.
3. Since the circuits schematics are given, all that left to do is writing the code. Moreover, since the connections between the micro-controller and the peripherals is constant, you can use software libraries without any change, witch can decrease the development time.

Hardware Features:

1. High performance PIC18F4550 Micro-controller.
2. Power Supply:
   1. On-board +5V regulator for direct input from 9V, 500 mA AC/DC wall adapter
   2. 9V battery connector.
   3. USB voltage.
3. RS-232 connection and associated hardware for direct connection to RS-232 interface.
4. Full speed (48 MHz) USB 2 interface.
5. In-Circuit Programming.
6. Three push button switches for external stimulus and RESET.
7. Three red LEDs.
8. Clock using 20MHz Canned Oscillator or 12MHz Crystal oscillator.
9. 2 x 20 LCD display with configurable backlight.
10. 16-Keypad with driver.
11. Ports connectors.
12. Adapters for 6-64 pin, SMD packages.

(Planned:)

1. 7-segment interface.
2. IR transmitter.
3. On board programmer.
4. Temperature sensor.
5. motor controller.
6. additional buttons and LEDs.
7. Ethernet interface.
8. SD-RAM interface.

In our development board there’s a unique combination of communication interface, and in-out devices that can’t be found all together on other boards instead of buying two development kits, one for USB and one for keypat/LCD or ethernet you can get them all in one development board.

Pic Board PCB

The Development Kit

Subscribe now via RSS and never miss a post!

Posted in Embedded by Lior Chen No Comments Yet