SBC66EC with Ethernet, USB, 11 Analog Inputs, 26 Digital I-O

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 and USB stacks.

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).

The board is shipped with a modified version of the Microchip Application Library TCP/IP and USB stacks. The full source code is available from us, and Microchip (original version not modified for SBC66EC). Only very minor modification have to be made to the code. 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!

Features

• Assembled with the Microchip PIC24FJ256GB206 Microcontroller
• 10/100 MBit/sec Ethernet port
• USB port via Micro B USB connector. Can also power board
• 256KBytes internal FLASH memory for program and constant data
• 96KBytes Bytes of internal SRAM
• 16 MIP Microcontroller execution speed
• External 32MBit (4Mbytes) SPI FLASH
• External 8Kbyte SPI EEPROM
• External RTC with CR2032 Battery holder, can provide backup power for over 20 years (assuming SBC board is powered most of the time)
• 4 USARTS (RS-232, RS-485, LIN Bus…), that can be routed (via Microchip’s Peripheral Pin Select feature) to any of 18 user I/O Ports
• 2 SPI Ports, that can be routed (via Microchip’s Peripheral Pin Select feature) to any of 18 user I/O Ports
• 9 PWM Modules, that can be routed (via Microchip’s Peripheral Pin Select feature) to any of 18 user I/O Ports
• 2 I2C ports
• 26 Digital 3.3V User I/O ports, of which 8 have on board 5V pull-up resistors to allow them to be used with 5V logic
• 11 of the I/O ports can be configured as 10-bit Analog Inputs (0 to 3.3V).
• 2.5V high precision external voltage reference for ADC converter
• Very High quality assembly, with brand name, quality components. No cheap, no name brand components are used!
• 5V Switch Mode Regulator (National Semiconductors), with very high quality, brand name capacitors!
• 3.3V Linear Regulator (Texas Instruments, ST or ON Semiconductors brand), with very high quality, brand name capacitors!
• Filtered analog supply to CPU for accurate analog measurements
• Daughter board connector with 20 pins for adding prototype, I/O or user expansion boards
• 10 pin FFC (Flat Flexible Cable) connectors with power and 8 I/O port.
• Uses standard 10 pin, 1.0mm spacing FFC cable
• Micro Match connector for connecting a serial I2C device (5V or 3.3V configurable), like the LCD2S serial LCD display with keypad decoder.
• Red System LED
• Shielded RJ45 network connector with link and activity LEDs
• Pin header with jumper that can be mounted in 3 positions: Park, “C” or “F”. Software can determine what position jumper is in, and for example use “C” position to restore default configuration, and “F” position to update firmware via bootloader.
• 2.1mm power connector for standard DC transformer.
• Very low supply current of about 25mA at 24V, or 50mA at 12V.
• Has an ICSP (In Circuit Serial Programming) connector (ICPC1 type) – CPU can be programmed and debugged in circuit. For details see Programming Modtronix PIC based boards.
• Free fully functional MPLAB C30 C Compiler available from www.microchip.com
• Is part of our MicroX product range, can be used together with other MicroX products.
• Wide operating voltage range from 7.5V to 40V.
• Wide operating temperature of -40 to 85C.
• RoHS Compliant, Lead Free

Documents

• SBC66EC Datasheet and Schematics
• TCPIP Demo App, code
• Programming the SBC66EC Board