• 30 May 2012 - Launched
new website for
SBC66EC and future SBC66 boards,
now called Netcruzer range. New site also includes
new firmware and
documentation.
Added
USB Bootloader
for
upgrading firmware,
USB Terminal for debugging and communicating with
board, and ability to
update web pages and firmware via the web server.
The SBC66EC is a Single Board Computer (SBC) with 10/100 Mbit/sec Ethernet
and micro USB ports. It is supplied programmed with demo applications from the Microchip Application
Library TCP/IP stack.
It can be used as is, or as a daughter board on a custom designed main board. The
PT10E
is an example of a board that takes the SBC66EC as a daughter board.
When used as a daughter board, it can also supply the main board with a couple of 100mA of 3.3V and 5V power.
It is assembled with the PIC24FJ256GB206 microcontroller, which has 256KBytes FLASH and 96KBytes SRAM.
Additionally this board has 32MBit (4MByte) external FLASH and 64KBit external EEPROM. The Microchip TCP/IP
(with Web Server, DHCP, Email, SNMP, Dynamic DNS...) and USB stack (CDC mode) only use 28% of the FLASH and
7% of the RAM.
The PIC24F Microcontroller used has a very nice feature called Peripheral Pin Select (PPS).
This is a great feature, and very well suited for a general purpose SBC board like this. With this feature, peripherals
on the CPU can be routed to any one of the "Peripheral" I/O port pins. For example, the PIC has 4 USART's, which
can now all be routed to the I/O pins of the daughter board connector if required. This would make it possible designing
a main board with 4 RS-232 or RS-485 ports by using the SBC66EC as a plug in daughter board. Other
peripherals available via the PPS feature are 9 PWM modules (Analog outputs), 3 SPI ports, 4 external interrupts, 9 input
capture, 5 external timer sources, and 3 comparator outputs.
It also has a RTC (real time clock) with battery holder for a CR2032 battery, which can provide
more than 20 years of backup time (assuming board is connected to external power most of the time).
As of June 2012, the board is shipped with the
Netcruzer Webserver
application (TCP/IP stack with web server) installed.
Board is also programmed with
USB Bootloader, allowing
firmware to be upgraded via the
Netcruzer USB Bootloader application.
Additionally firmware and webpages can also be updated via
web interface
The full source code is
available here.
All code is written in C, and can be edited, programmed and debugged with the
MPLAB IDE,
and compiled with the MPLAB C30 C Compiler.
There are plenty of Digital Inputs, Digital Outputs, Analog Inputs, PWMs and more available
via two daughter board connectors and a 10 pin FFC connectors.
The SBC66EC accepts a wide supply voltage from 7.5V to 40V. It has a dual 3.3V and 5.0V power supply, making
it easy to interface with both 3.3V and 5.0V devices. All chips on the board are 3.3V, but the microcontroller's I/O pins are 5.0V
tolerant, allowing it to interface with 5.0V devices. Eight ports can also be configured to have 5V digital outputs.
The 5V power supply is a high quality 500mA DC/DC Converter from National Semiconductors, with
shielded Inductor and very high quality, long life capacitors. A linear regulator is used for the 3.3V supply. This double power supply
scheme, with linear regulator for 3.3V, ensures the CPU and analog supply is clean and has low noise.
The board can be powered via a 2.1mm power connector, the Ethernet port (PoE), or the USB port (solder jumper).
A custom PoE implementation can be used with the Ethernet port, by supplying 7V to 40V on the spare pairs of
the Ethernet cable. There are many commercial Ethernet PoE injectors available that do just this.
The 5V and 3.3V regulators on the SBC66EC have current ratings much higher than is required.
This enables custom circuitry used with this board to get power via the daughter board connector.
This board is assembled with very high quality, brand name components! Our goal is for
this board to work error free for many years. For this reason, we do not use cheap components,
or stress components to the limit of their capability! The quality of assembly, and reliability
of components used sets this board apart from similar competitor products!
For details on the PIC24FJ256GB206, download it's datasheet from
www.microchip.com.
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