ANL, Argonne, USA
Even as the diversity and capabilities of Single-Board-Computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBoard continue to increase, low level microprocessor solutions also offer the possibility of robust distributed control system interfaces. Since they can be smaller and cheaper than even the least expensive SBC, they are easily integrated directly onto printed circuit boards either via direct mount or pre-installed headers. The ever increasing flash-memory capacity and processing clock speeds has enabled these types of microprocessors to handle even relatively complex tasks such as management of a full TCP/IP software and hardware stack. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate several different implementation scenarios wherein a computer control system can communicate directly with an off-the-shelf Microchip brand microcontroller and its associated peripherals. The microprocessor can act as a Hardware-to-Ethernet communication bridge and provide services such as distributed reading and writing of analog and digital values, webpage serving, simple network monitoring and others to any custom electronics solution.
* Microchip Technology Inc., www.microchip.com
