Montrose, CA (PRWEB) April 2, 2007
The Micro/sys USB148 is the first I/O board to implement the new StackableUSB specification. This high density digital I/O and timer board brings real world I/O to StackableUSB. It operates as a USB device when stacked above or below a host CPU board. Up to four of these USB peripheral boards can be stacked in any combination or with other I/O boards, satisfying the growing demand for more flexibility and faster board-to-board communication. The StackableUSB point-to-point architecture routes the connections up the stack to the next peripheral in line, bringing USB technology into rugged, compact spaces and making it an ideal choice for industrial applications.
The USB148 addresses the needs of OEM systems requiring high quantities of digital I/O lines by providing two 82C55 DIO devices which offer 48 lines of TTL I/O, as well as an onboard 82C54 device that provides three 16-bit timer/counters. The 8-position DIP switch and 8 LEDs can be used for debugging during system development, for station number, or configuration settings in the final production system. All discrete I/O lines have software programmable pull-ups or pull-downs. The robust USB148 also protects against power sequencing problems with onboard current-limiting resistors that prevent overload currents.
At the core of the USB148 is a Silicon Laboratories microcontroller unit that runs at 48 MHz. This core is compatible with 8051 architecture and integrates many peripherals such as the 10-bit A/D converter, 2 UARTs, 1 I2C, and 1 SPI bus which are available to the user. Micro/sys provides a predefined protocol that carries data over the USB so there is no need for the user to develop code for the microcontroller. This protocol allows a host application, via a custom driver, to directly access and control all of the USB board peripherals. Therefore, the only code the user needs to write to control the USB148 is for the host CPU for which sample code is provided. The rugged USB148 is rated for operation over the industrial temperature range of 40
