delabs Schematics » Embedded-Systems

Interface a uC to PC RS232 with MAX232A

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:56:00 +0000

This is the standard configuration on how to Interface a uC like 8051 to PC RS232 with MAX232A. The UART or Serial port was not present in 8049/8749 chips which were the ancestors of 8051/8031. Pages of code were needed to make a software UART in MCS-48. The 8051 integrated the hardware UART and short commands made it tick. The most important innovation which made uC popular was the C in 80C31. C is for CMOS. This made the chip work cooler and work on even batteries and small power supplies.

The 8749 and 8751 are the UV EPROM type of uC. With limited erase/write cycles. The FLASH revolution changed every thing, you could update firmware over a phone line modem. Even without Ethernet, the firmware could be updated by making every embedded device a node on the EPABX. Now TCP/IP and Wi-Fi makes it all very easy.

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Precision Amplifier with Digital uC Control

admin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:15:00 +0000

When Instruments are designed a analog front end is essential and also as most equipment have digital or microcontroller interface the analog circuit needs to have digital access. The Circuits DACT0008 and DACT0009 are both useful in building instruments which have digital control.

This circuit DACT0009 is similar to DACT0008 but gains of upto 100 can be realized in this configuration, this is useful for signal conditioning of low mV outputs of transducers. The gain selection resistors R3 to R6 can be selected by the user and can be anywhere from 1K to 1M and can also be trimpots for obtaining gains as required by user, the resistor values shown are for decade gains e.g. for an auto ranging DPM.

R1 and C1 reduce ripple in input and also snubs transients, ZD1 and ZD2 Zeners clamp input to +/- 4.7V the input current is limited by R1 lastly C1 and C2 are decoupling capacitors. The OpAmp U3 is used to increase the input impedance so that very low mV inputs are not loaded on measurement, the user can terminate the inputs with a resistor of his choice like 10M or 1M to avoid floating of the inputs when no measurement is being made. U5 is used as an Inverting buffer to restore polarity of the input and U4 is used as a buffer on the output of 4052 because loading it by resistance of value less than 1M will cause an error. An alternative is use R7 = R8 =1M and remove U4 but this may not be ideal. Gains of greeter than 100 may not be practical because at 100 gain itself a 100uV offset will be around 10mV at the output (100uV*100) this can be trimmed using the offset null option in the OP07, connect a trimpot between 1 and 8 and connect wiper to +5.

For better performance use ICL7650 ( not pin compatible ) instead of OP07 and use +/- 7.5V instead of +/-5V supply.
Eight steps for gain or attenuation can be added by using two 4051 and by using Pin 6 Inhibit on 4051/52 limitless steps can be added by cascading many 4051,52,53 as Pin 6 works like a chip select.

Some extended applications of this circuits are……. Error correction in Transducer amplifiers by correcting gain. Auto ranging in DMM. Sensor selection or Input type selection in Process control. Digitally Preset power supplies or electronic loads. Programmable Precision mV or mA sources. PC or uC or uP based instruments. Data loggers and Scanners.

Vout = (Rf/Ri) * Vin -o- Gain = Av = Rf/Ri

Digital Inputs – Logic 0 is 0V Logic 1 is 5V
X Y Value	B	A	Gain Av
0	0	0	1/10
1	0	1	1
2	1	0	10
3	1	1	100

Precision Attenuator for Digital uC Control

admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:55:00 +0000

Precision Attenuator with digital control

The Circuit DACT0008 is a programmable attenuator and the digital control can be a remote dip switch, a CMOS Logic Output like the A-B-C-D outputs of a decade counter, or an I/O port of a uC like 80C31.

The heart of the circuit is the popular OP07 OpAmp with Ultra Low Offset in the inverting configuration, 4052 a CMOS analog multiplexer switch enables the gain change, the innovation of the circuit is that the on resistance ( around 100 ohms) of 4052 switch is bypassed so that no error is introduced by its use.

The resistors used R1 to R6 can be 0.1% 50ppm if you will use a 3 ½ DPM i.e. + /- 1999 counts ( approx. 11 bit ), but for 4 ½ DPM ( approx. 14 bit ) you may need to have trimpots2 in place of R3, R4, R5 & R6 gain selection resistors to properly calibrate to required accuracy but for testing or trials use 1% 100ppm MFR resistors but the errors will be around 1%.

To keep parts count (hence cost) to minimum the common or ground is used as the positive input and negative being one end of R1 this is because the OpAmp inverts the polarity as it is used in inverting configuration, this does not matter as the equipment will be isolated by the power supply transformer and all polarities are relative, but if common has to be negative then add U4 and U5 as shown in DACT0009.

The OP07 pin out is based on standard single OpAmp 741 and any other OpAmp like CA3140, TLO71, LF351 Can be used but with a lot off offset errors but for trials any OpAmp may do but the errors may be > 1% and this is not tolerable n precision instrumentation. OP07 has also equivalents like uA714 & LM607 ultra low offset < 100uV and low input bias <10nA and high input impedance >100M are the key requirements for a good instrumentation amp for DC inputs.

Vout = -(Rf/Ri) * Vin -o- Gain = Av = Rf/Ri

Digital Inputs – Logic 0 is 0V Logic 1 is 5V
X Y Value	B	A	Gain Av
0	0	0	1/1000
1	0	1	1/100
2	1	0	1/10
3	1	1	1

1 : A-B : A, B, C, D is 2⁰ 2¹ 2² 2³ is 1, 2, 4, 8 respectively.
2 : trimpots : e.g. replace R6 1K by 200E trimpot + 900E MFR. 900E can be from 1K parallel to 10K MFR.

Design Background

a. Input 500 V max

1/4 W Rresistor can withstand 250V D1 and D2 Clamps the voltage to +/-0.5V therby protecting OpAmp. R1 and R2 Limit the current also.

D1 and D2 Clamps the voltage to +/-0.5V therby protecting OpAmp.

b. Output

Output connect to DPM 7107/7135 or any other A/D Convertor or OpAmp Stage. Use a buffer at output if output has to be loaded by a value less than 1Meg. Use an inverting buffer if input leads have to have polarity where gnd is -In. See DACT0009 for details.

c. 4052 CMOS Switch

The 4052/51/53 Analog Multiplexers have an on Resistance of around 100E the highlight of the circuit is that the CMOS on resistance comes in series with the opamp output source resistance, which produces no error at output.

Digital Control Options

A and B can be controlled by I/O port of uC, like 80C31 so that the uC can Control gain. A and B can be given to Counters like 4029/4518 to scroll gain digitally. A and B can be connected to DIP switch or thumbwheel switch.

Caution !!!

Circuit does not isolate only attenuates. When high voltage is present at input any part of circuit is a danger to touch.

Battery Backup for SRAM or Microcontroller

admin — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:18:00 +0000

This circuit can be used as a low cost SRAM and Microcontroller-Microprocessor Battery Backup. All the diodes are 1N4148, The diodes prevent battery discharge back to power source. D8 gives a one way path to charge Battery thru R13 which limits current. D4 ensures a one way path of supply to chip when power is present. D5 is backup supply on power failure.

The chip a real time clock, RAM or Processor can be put to standby or sleep on power failure. If it is not a smart chip then make sure on power failure all outputs of chip are high impedance or floating. do not use any pullups or resistor dividers to Vbat, which is the supply to chip. There should be no leakage path from Vbat, decoupling cap of chip must be plastic.

If you want to use this circuit for short term retention or for CMOS logic chips then you can use a 4700uF Cap in place of battery. This works for many hours but the cap has big footprint on PCB. For long duration use more battery AH Ampere-Hour. Vcc is 5V DC regulated.

The Vbat and Vcc can be monitored with comparator like LM339, this circuit can generate the reset or low battery signals. The power on reset and power down reset can corrupt data on brown outs or black outs or even spikes and EMI. So back up data on flash. For Rapid writing and reading SRAM is better and if write-read cycles are high SRAM is best. But if you need to store values and refer to them like a look-up table flash is better.

The power fluctuations can hang the chip, so a watchdog chip may be required. The conventional way was the to monitor the keyboard-display scan on a i/o port. If the pulses are coming at the rate you programmed the cpu is alive and kicking and doing its job. If the CPU is Playing Hookey, then the pulses stop coming and it has to be reset.

555 based Reset Generator

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 03:19:00 +0000

You must have read all the circuits and explanation on the other pages at delabs to understand this, as i cannot repeat the same thing as i have done it more than once already.

The circuit is a 555 monostable, The push-switch is to trigger and generate a reset pulse for uC. The diode is for OR’ ing later. The High will go thru the diode but the Low of 555 cannot drink any current as diode blocks.

The bottom part of the Circuit is the CD4093 Schmitt nand based flipflop. This is my favorite because of studying designs in Elektor Electronics.

What is the Schmitt then ?, It is better to visit the links below to learn. It can make a sine or triangle or any shape waveform to square. It can help square a very messy waveform.

Two nand gates are connected to form a flip-flop toggle switch. When 555 gives out a pulse, the pulse is delayed by a R-C which results in a ramp, the third nand-Schmitt gives out delayed low trigger to toggle nand-flipflop-switch. The Nand-toggle-switch is rest at any time with the lower pushbutton. The fourth nand output gate is not really required. But the 4093 is quad nand, so unused nand inputs should not float , pull-up or pull-down. So it has just been added in circuit so that he can fit some role, or else he will be bored.

Now you can figure out how such blocks can be used like Lego blocks in your own amazing designs.

RS232 with Opto-Isolation

admin — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:07:00 +0000

I had to once interface an high voltage circuit to PC, The uC had to communicate thru RS232–Comm port–Serial Port.

Even though i had isolation at the sensors and actuators to make doubly sure the PC also has been isolated. There are chips that are available for this purpose, The circuit above is built with discrete and passive components except for the opto 4N35. You can use MCT2E and CNY17-3 Optos too. For MCT2E some tweak may be needed as current transfer ratio is 20, for the other two CTR is 100 so above design will work.

The circuit derives power from PC but does not load the PC supply. Any voltage above 5V applied to the PC connectors may lead to damage of motherboard in PC. Old PCs were more vulnerable but PCs today maybe a bit rugged at the Ports. Due to internal current limits and clamping.

The VCC, VDD and Agnd are derived from PC no other power needs to be applied on PC side of opto. On uC side of opto the uC power supply lines +5 and gnd has to be used. There is no copper link between the two sides and depending on opto a 1KV isolation is possible if PCB is well designed. The PCB should show the visual isolation above and components should be laid on separate areas of PCB to prevent creepage.

The LEDs are to indicate the port activity Rx and Tx, they are not required once testing is over. The circuit can be simpler, but this worked for me and it is not tested at very-high buad rates.

The levels of RS232 are not TTL like 0-5 we have both polarities +10 and -10. The circuit has to change that to drive the Opto Leds. Read more about serial port here.

And some RS232 software. here.

Digital gain control of Opamp.

admin — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 23:27:00 +0000

The gain of U1 can be controlled by a digital binary 1248 nibble at ABC. The gain at digital 000 is unity or 1 and the gain at various stages are set by 4051.

There are eight different gains as the steps of gain resistor network is chosen by 4051. The on resistance of 4051 channel around 100E gets added to U1 pin 2 internal impedance.

You can use separate resistor networks with trimpots for each channel if you require but keep the networks total burden on U1 pin 6 to around 10K, not less than than. You can use this to set the gain of a amplifier with the help of a microcontroller.