Lpc2000

The Philips LPC900 series of micros have on-board UARTS down to 8 pin
packages and are very good value for money - starting at a US$1 or so.
The on-board RC oscillators of these devices are now factory trimmed to
allow them to be accurately used for UART comm's - no xtal/ceramic osc
required - further keeping the costs down.   

Philips LPC900 site - http://tinyurl.com/3ntch

You could use the larger pin devices on a parallel bus or go for one of
the smaller packages and use I2C or SPI comm's. The software required to
turn one of these micro's into an addressable UART is very small - a few
hundred bytes. You can even pick a small development board direct from
the Philips site - MCB900 - for US$59, more than powerful enough to
develop this type of code on.

Philips has a huge range of single/dual/quad/octal UARTS but the costs
don't stack up against these smaller micros. Even the devices with
FIFO's could be successfully emulated using the RAM in the micro.

David Kay
Field Application Engineer - New Zealand
 
local focus_global reach - That's adilam !



-----Original Message-----
From: Leon Heller [mailto:leon_heller@...] 
Sent: Tuesday, 19 October 2004 1:55 a.m.
To: lpc2000@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [lpc2000] 3rd serial port





>From: "Lasse Madsen" <lasse.madsen@...>
>Reply-To: lpc2000@yahoogroups.com
>To: <lpc2000@yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: RE: [lpc2000] 3rd serial port
>Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 14:27:07 +0200
>
>
>Hi Gabe
>
>Maxim makes SPI=>RS232 converters by as far as i remember they are
>pretty expensive...

I've used them, and they are very good, but expensive. Another option
would 
be to use a small '2313 AVR (or a PIC) as a software UART connected to
the 
LPC2000 via SPI. I did this once for a comms hub, with software SPI
running 
on three '2313s, connected to a mid-range PIC, and it worked very well. 
Hardware cost will be lower, but software will have to be written. It
was a 
cheaper solution in our case, for quantity production.

Leon





 
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