Designing industrial sensors with Atmel AVR: Part I

Industrial sensors are typically tasked with detecting, positioning or identifying an object or rotating axis in a factory-automated system. Industrial sensors utilize a variety of technologies, including inductive, magneto-resistive, capacitive, optical, pressure and ultrasonic.

Key design considerations include:

• Non-volatile storage for calibration values
• Small PCB size
• Accurate analog measurement
• Arithmetic for signal conditioning
• Digital communication interface for new emerging standards such as IO-Link
• Optional analog output signal
• Long product life time
• Optional hardware authentication products for secure identification and authenticated confidential communications

“Atmel’s versatile AVR family of microcontrollers enables designers to meet the needs of a variety of sensor applications. First off, there is the small form factor, down to DNF 2x2x0,5 mm. We also provide on-chip true EEPROM, ADC with differential measurement/optional gain stage and internal analog reference voltage remains stable in changing temperatures,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Meanwhile, efficient 8-/16-bit CPU minimizes power consumption. Additional key specs include serial communication interfaces with Direct Memory Access (DMA) support, internal digital-to-analog converter (DAC), pulse width modulation (PWM) and CryptoAuthentication support, the latter offering a secure vault for root secrets (keys) and secure mechanisms for authentication.”

Interested in learning more about designing industrial sensors with Atmel AVR? You can check out our extensive device breakdown here. Also, be sure to check back tomorrow for part two of this series for an in-depth look at an Atmel-powered sensor device reference design.

Building Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) with Atmel tech

A Human Machine Interface, or HMI, typically includes a number of components required to signal and control the state of industrial automation equipment. These interface products can range from a basic LED status indicator to a 20-inch TFT panel with a touchscreen interface.

Unsurprisingly, HMI applications require mechanical robustness and resistance to water, dust, moisture, a wide range of temperatures and, in some environments, secure communication with Ingress Protection (IP) ratings up to IP65, IP67 and IP68.

We at Atmel offer a versatile and extensive portfolio of devices that can be used to design various aspects of a human machine interface.

“For example, our unique capacitive QTouch technology, SAM9 microprocessors and CryptoAuthentication devices enable designers to meet the above-mentioned requirements and more with an optimized BOM,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Plus, Atmel tech supports high source and sink output IO capabilities up to 60mA for direct drive of LEDs, with high-speed PWM units enabling LED dimming and screen back-lighting. And due to its superior field penetration, our touch technology operates through 6mm thick, non-conductive surfaces.”

The engineering rep also noted that the optimized signal-to-noise ratio of the Atmel QMatrix touch technology helps make the design immune to water, moisture, or dust – enabling operators to use gloves. In addition, Atmel’s capacitive touch tech eases design of full hermetic or sealed products, while power efficiency works to minimize heat dissipation.

“It should also be noted that Atmel’s touch spread spectrum frequency implementation helps designers meet electro-magnetic emission requirements,” the engineering rep continued. “And that is why our industrial microprocessor product portfolio with integrated LCD, combined with the our QTouch technology, are the ideal candidates for an engineer’s next control panel design. On the security side, Atmel’s CryptoAuthentication family of hardware security devices provides cost effective solutions for authenticated and encrypted communications between HMI and industrial equipment.”

Specific examples of Atmel tech powering HMI devices? Well, LED indicators and mechanical switches are a leading HMI for industrial applications – with Atmel’s AVR and AT91SAM microcontrollers offering a variety of benefits. Similarly, Atmel’s capacitive touch technology for HMI helps protect industrial interface modules, while increasing design flexibility and enhancing UI look and feel. Meanwhile, Atmel’s industrial control panels with LCD Displays provides HMI operators with an efficient, flexible way to monitor and control increasingly complex automated processes, with hardware security products protecting firmware integrity from tampering to assure continuous and reliable performance.

“Atmel HMI solutions help reduce board space and enable a lower BOM, simply because they do not require a separate LCD controller chip, or an external resistive touchscreen chip, with standard DDR2 external memory providing lower cost and longer availability,” the engineering rep added.

“Last, but certainly not least, Atmel solutions also provide high performance with high-speed communication and are available with ready-to-use software support. Of course, an evaluation kit is available for each Atmel SAM9 with free Linux distribution and Microsoft Windows Embedded CE BSP.”

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s tech portfolio for powering HMI devices? A complete device breakdown is available here.

Kenneth Finnegan on the AVR Dragon eval board

I met a great engineer at the eFlea electronic flea market here in Silicon Valley. Kenneth already had an ME degree. Now he wants to get an MSEE with an emphasis in networking embedded systems. He is at Cal Poly. So he asked me if I could get him an AVR Dragon, a debugger board Atmel sells. A debugger is a gizmo that lets you see “inside” a chip. You can read its internal registers and see memory values. It makes it way easy to troubleshoot what is going wrong with your program. The Dragon works with most AVR microcontrollers. I got him a deal through our University program and asked if he would write a review when he got the board. He did a great job, and posted it on his website, with the understanding I would just cut-and-paste it to Bits and Pieces.

One of my good friends at Atmel, Paul Rako, recently sent me a sample of the AVR Dragon (Atmel store page), which is a in-circuit serial programmer (ISP) and On-Chip Debugger (OCD). The ISP functionality is familiar to most hobbyists in the AVR embedded programming scene; through the standard 2×3 pin header, you can erase the flash memory on an AVR and download new program code onto the chip. A typical example of an ISP programmer, and what I’ve been using exclusively up until now, is the wonderful, if sometimes a bit flaky, AdaFruit USBtinyISP.

As you look back through my blog, you can probably tell that only having ISP capabilities will get you pretty far, but where the Dragon really shines is in its ability to perform on-chip debugging. Most of the third-party programmers only implement the basic SPI-based erase-and-burn cycle you use when programming an AVR, but OCD allows you to set break-points in your program on the actual chip, and then step through your program code, read variable values, etc. All those glorious interactive debugging features that computer programmers have been spoiled with for decades. This makes embedded development MUCH easier, and an ability I’ve been suffering without while my projects have grown progressively more sophisticated.

 When I first opened the shipment from Atmel, I was very happy to see a piece of dev kit finally come in a reasonably sized, and attractive, box. I’ll actually be able to store this thing in its box instead of having to shuck it and store the PCB floating around in gallon ziplocks like most of my other dev kits.

 Look at that minimally wasted space! ESD foam on top and bottom, so over all, I’m happy with the packaging, which is surprisingly important when you literally have an entire closet dedicated to development kits collected over the years.

 Nice touch on the backside silk screen logo. I’d like to have seen the pin-out references on the top, particularly since they’re oriented for “top view,” but it’s still a handier reference than the printout I have floating around in one of my electronics binders.

Looking at the headers from the top of the board:

• The first row has 3x Vcc and 3x GND, which seems a little strange for a programmer, but might be handy for some projects?
• The second row has your 10 pin JTAG and 6 pin ISP headers, which are your two work-horse programming interfaces for AVRs big and small, and finally an unpopulated high voltage programming interface. The HV_PROG interface allows you to burn AVRs like old-school EEPROMs, and allows you to get around having to use the SPI ISP bus for programming. This is most useful when you want to use the reset pin as an IO pin (did you ever wonder why Atmel bothers assigning an IO port number to the reset pin?).
• And below the three programming interfaces… six rows of unpopulated, unlabeled, headers? Uhhh…

So the bottom third of the board’s real estate dedicated to empty headers threw me for a loop until I noticed the sentence in the description, “A development area lets designers build their own circuitry or add sockets for the desired device footprint.”

Fair enough; I can load the bottom of my Dragon with a socket and make it an AVR target board. I’ll just pull up the manual and figure out what the on-PCB pinout looks like…

Uhhh…

So apparently, Atmel didn’t feel the need to put the Dragon’s users manual on its product page? After finally resorting to searching through Google, I managed to find the users manual in Atmel’s online help system, which quickly lead me to what I was looking for. I’m not entirely impressed with the rats-nest of jumper wires they have in the tutorial, and the three pairs of Vcc/GND make a lot more sense now, but I’m not convinced I’ll not just stick to my standard practice of building separate target boards for each AVR model I use and keeping them in a ziplock in my drawer. I’d have expected a target area like that to use a bilateral switch array to allow for automatic retargetting to a specific AVR model, but that’s asking a bit much of a $50 dev tool.

So overall, I’m happy with the packaging and feature set, but am a little disappointed that they made the board 50% larger for what seems like a half-thought-out target area. I look forward to being able to use a less kludgy programmer than the USBtinyISP, and finally being able to set break points in my code. As Paul says, “friends don’t let friends go without on-chip debugging.”

Hey, I told Kenneth to give an honest review, and I am not going to edit out his criticism. And as you folks realize, it’s not like “Atmel didn’t feel the need” to put the docs in the product page. My buddy Gil over in the next cube just told me we have over 2000 English-language product pages. And those come in four languages. So I showed our web team the blog, and they point out it is not that simple. See the doc Kenneth found was a help page for the Atmel Software Framework (ASF). So it should not go in the documentation tab, since it is not technically product documentation. But Michael in the web team feels Kenneth’s pain. So he is adding that link Kenneth found to the product page description, which will keep the CMS (content management systems) happy. Like I joke “the other guy’s job is always easy.” That is the nice thing about coming to work here, where you can see how hard everybody is working to make the website do what you folks want it to. Kudos to the whole team—they really “get it”.

Now, the really cool thing is that we cleaned out a storage room and I found a Dragon I can play with too. As I mess with it, I will keep you posted on my trials and tribulations. Bear in mind my Atmel programming has all been in assembly language, so this might be exciting if I have to learn C.

Although I joke about “Friends don’t let friends go without a debugger,” it’s also true that “simple is good”. Kenneth was the guy I asked what was so cool about Arduino. He said: “Two big buttons. Compile, and Program, and that is all.” So if you can debug with printf statements out the serial port, go right ahead. When you want a real debugger we have the Dragon, and our Xplained boards not only have a debugger built in, but some of them have a header, so that after you get your board laid out and built, you can connect the header on the Xplained board to your target hardware, and it will be a debugger for the AVR in your production board too. Nice.

Designing PLC systems and I/O modules with Atmel

PLC systems are typically highly complex,  as they integrate numerous board modules required by current-gen automated industrial environments, including:

• Programmable logic controllers (PLC) or programmable automated controllers (PAC)
• Distributed Control Systems
• Digital and analog IO-modules
• Field bus communication modules
• Industrial Ethernet interfaces
• Wireless communication module

“Clearly, the diversity of board designs for industrial PLC applications is challenging for R&D departments. For optimal hardware and software development, designers require a broad, efficient product family where development can be re-used as much as possible,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“To meet these needs, Atmel offers efficient AVR and ARM-based product lineups ranging from low pincount, low flash size microcontrollers to high-performing embedded MPUs running at 400MHz.”

Indeed, for main CPU applications, Atmel’s SAM9 series offers up to 400Mhz ARM926EJ core with up to 32KB instruction and data caches for fast execution times, while a unique dual EBI (External Bus interface) feature allows connecting dedicated circuits for field bus or real time industrial Ethernet communication without strongly impacting the bus load and the performance of the application.

“In addition, the implementation of the TCM (Tightly Coupled Memory) interface on selected products enables access to the internal SRAM with zero wait state at 400MHz. With this feature, time-critical code sections and interrupt routines can be executed fast and deterministically,” the Atmel engineering rep continued. “Plus, our microcontrollers support up to 37 DMA channels with double buffering feature to minimize CPU load and reduce real time constraints, while support for DDR2 external memory enables lower cost and longer availability for CPU devices.”

Additional key features? An integrated power-on-reset (eliminates the need for cost-intensive external power management IC), serial NVM for system boot (allows smaller PCB layout), industrial BGA package with 0.8mm pitch (eases PCB layout and reduces assembly costs) and system security solutions (peripheral components).

“In terms of I/O module solutions, Atmel offers high-speed serial peripherals for a fast communication with backplane bus interface or the connection to high resolution external ADC or DAC, with SPI data rates up to 48Mbps on the SAM3U. CAN modules are available on Atmel AVR UC3, megaAVR and AT91SAM microcontrollers,” the engineering rep explained.

“There are also numerous 16-bit timers with input capture function for time stamping, PWM channels support control and dim functions for LEDs. Of course, Atmel supports a rich set of analog functions such as 12-bit ADC and DAC, as well as analog comparator for monitoring the operation condition of the IO-module. And last, but certainly not least, we offer a high performance CPU up to 96MHz with integrated MAC unit supporting the growing demand for signal conditioning on the analog IO-module.”

Interested in learning more about designing PLC and I/O modules with Atmel tech? You can check out our complete device breakdown here.

Designing in-home display units with Atmel tech

In-home display (IHD) units play a critical role in helping customers reduce their energy usage by providing relevant stats in real-time. Indeed, IHD units are typically designed to acquire and display information via a sensor with built-in RF and/or PLC. A more effective method? Transmitting information from a smart meter using a home area network.

“IHD units vary in complexity, from simple wall-mounted segment LCD displays, up to battery-operated products with color TFT displays and touchscreens,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “Advanced IHDs can display not only consumption information, but energy consumption advice from energy providers. They can also support a variety of additional functions such as home automation.”

To be sure, IHD units typically support displays, connectivity via USB and RF, as well as low power and touch buttons or screens for a fully interactive user interface (UI). And that is why Atmel offers a wide range of versatile microcontrollers (MCUs) for IHDs, from entry-level 8-bit AVRs to a sophisticated ARM9 core with embedded LCD graphics display controllers.

“In short, Atmel’s MCUs help facilitate flexible touch solutions, from buttons and wheels to sophisticated touch-screens, all providing support for a wide range of user interface features and capabilities,” the Atmel engineering rep explained.

“Meanwhile, power line communications (PLC) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions with full digital implementation deliver best-in-class sensitivity, high performance and high temperature stability. Plus, our CryptoAuthentication lineup provide a cost-effective, easy-to-implement security solution that is critical for wireless communication between meters and  IHD units.”

In terms of power efficiency, Atmel offers a number of advanced capabilities, including 1 µA watchdog and brown-out, picoPower tech for extended battery life, an event system to allow measurement while CPU is in SLEEP mode, support for true 1.6V operation, low-power RF transceivers for connectivity and the lowest power 32 kHz crystal oscillator (650nA RTC).

“In-house display units can range from a basic segment LCD to a more sophisticated color TFT. Depending on the display choice drivers and required  processing power, the primary microcontroller can be either an entry-level 8- or 32-bit MCU, scaling up to a more powerful embedded MPU with on-chip TFT LCD controller,” the engineering rep added.

“As products become more sophisticated, so will the UI. Atmel touch technology provides robust support for state of the art features such as capacitive touch buttons or a full touchscreen. The communications within the IHD depend on the implemented architecture of the HAN (typically RF or PLC). Of course, wireless connectivity can also be supported via Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) cards.”

Interested in learning more about designing in-home display units with Atmel tech? Be sure to check out our extensive device breakdown here.

Designing an advanced glucose meter with AVR MCUs

A glucose meter can best be described as a portable battery powered medical device used to measure blood glucose concentration on test strips.

Glucose meters are typically equipped with a display and mass storage solution, with certain models featuring an IrDA or a USB interface to export data to a computer. Unsurprisingly, there is currently an emerging trend for glucose meters to be equipped with Bluetooth or BTLE capabilities, thereby facilitating easy connection to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Key design considerations for a glucose meter include ultra low power consumption, high system integration (high-end analog peripherals), low BOM cost and versatile connectivity options for bio-sensors, display, buzzer, memory and PCs.

As illustrated in the diagram above, Atmel’s versatile AVR portfolio can be used to help engineers design an advanced glucose meter using the ATxmega256A3BU 8/16bit low power AVR-based MCU, AT86RF231/232/233 RF Transceiver, AT42QT Touch IC and ATSHA204 Authentication IC with EEPROM.

“Simply put, Atmel’s ATxmega256A3BU offers ultra low power consumption, high integration, compact package and connectivity features to address the key needs of a glucose meter,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“In terms of ultra low power requirements, our ATxmega256A3BU supports 1.62-3.6V and boasts 5 flexible sleep modes. In Power Save mode (RTC running), the current consumption is below 1uA, while in Active Mode, the current consumption is 350uA/MHz at 1.8V. Meanwhile, a DMA Controller handles data transfer between the peripherals and memory.”

On the connectivity side, Atmel offers a full speed compliant USB device port with embedded PHY to save BOM cost (~$0.5-$1.0). As expected, the port can be used for battery charging and data transfer to a PC. Atmel also offers integrated UART, USART, SPI and I2C – allowing easy connection to external sensors, memories and display.

“It should also be noted that Atmel-powered glucose meters require a minimum in terms of external (additional) hardware, thanks to integrated RTC, high performance ADC and DAC, PLL and voltage reference,” said the engineering rep.

“And last, but certainly not least, Atmel’s AVR MCUs benefit from our extensive software ecosystem, such as Atmel Studio and free software libraries of production ready source code including ZigBee PRO Software (BitCloud), Proprietary Low Footprint, 802.15.4 Mesh Software Stack, USB Stack and QTouch Library.”

Atmel motor control systems for the automotive masses

Atmel has more than 15 years of experience with driver ICs for DC motors, supplying products at a high-volume for a variety of common body electronic applications, including mirror control and flap control in HVACs.

Although Atmel driver ICs are equipped with a variety of types of driver stages, they all share the same protection features – short-circuit protection, temperature warning and switch off, low voltage protection and open load detection – all of which are a must for automotive electronics.

“The continuously growing Atmel driver family includes a wide variety of combinations of integrated high-side and low-side output stages, enabling designers to easily tailor solutions to their needs,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Our driver portfolio includes ICs for small DC motors controlled directly from the output stages. At the heart of the Atmel portfolio are motor driver system basis chips, with integrated gate drivers or pre-drivers to control separate NMOSFETs. These drivers can be used to control almost any size of NMOSFETs, for use in a broad range of applications.”

With few external components, the Atmel driver ICs with LIN communication and the Atmel AVR microcontrollers combine to create cost-efficient motor driver modules, complete with LIN functionality for harsh automotive conditions.

“In short, the Atmel motor driver family targets applications with brushed and brushless DC motors for standard temperature applications, as well as demanding high-temperature ‘under-the-hood’ applications,” the engineering rep added.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s motor control systems? Be sure to check out our full device breakdown here.

Arduino-based satellites for the homebrew masses

Arduino boards are used to power a wide range of electronic designs and DIY hobbyist creations including robots, desk lamps, environmental sensors, 3D printers and even satellites.

Indeed, the San Francisco-based Nanosatisfi is currently prepping two Arduino-powered satellites (ArduSat) for launch on an unmanned HII-B rocket, which Kickstarter backers have “rented” to snap pictures, broadcast a message or conduct experiments, including monitoring radioactivity levels generated by space phenomena such as sun storms and background activity.

According to Nanosatisfi CEO Peter Platzer, Arduino technology is key to the company’s philosophy.

“I’ve really wanted to use something that everyone across the world can use, that has wide appeal to everyday people,” Platzer recently told NPR. “There really was no alternative.”

To be sure, ArduSat is designed to give ordinary people – students, teachers, individuals and enterprises – the chance to carry out experiments by controlling over 25 different sensors integrated in the unit, (spectrometer, magnetometer, radiation, camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, temperature, etc.)

As noted above, the goal of the ArduSat project is to make space accessible to consumers, relatively cheaply.

Unsurprisingly, Atmel-powered Arduino boards are also widely used in the art world, with Alberto Gaitán, a Washington, D.C.-based artist, telling NPR  that Ardunio’s popularity is “growing, and growing fast.”

For example, an artist by the name of Joyce Yu-Jean Lee told NPR she wanted to use the Arduino in her next video art project.

“I’ve been wanting for a very long time – since graduate school – to work with sensors to make my videos interact with the viewers,” she explained. “I’ll have a solo show in the fall. I think I can get it down by then.”

And why not? As Arduino’s Massimo Banzi says, you don’t need anyone’s permission to make something great.

A closer look at Atmel’s Xplained kits

Earlier this summer, Bits & Pieces took readers on a brief virtual tour of Atmel’s Xplained Pro kits. Today, we want to familiarize our readers with Atmel’s Xplained evaluation kits for our extensive lineup of 8- and 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs).

“Essentially, Atmel’s Xplained lineup consists of a series of low-cost MCU boards to help devs evaluate and demonstrate product features and capabilities for different Atmel microcontroller families,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “In addition, a rich selection of example projects and code drivers are provided in Atmel Studio, while code functionality is easily added by pulling in additional drivers and libraries from the Atmel Software Framework.

The Atmel Xplained series also includes a range of add-on boards that can be stacked on top of the MCU boards to create platforms for specific application development. This means a wide range of add-on boards is available, including inertial pressure and temperature sensors, ZigBee RF and Cryptographic authentication.

However, it should be noted that due to difference in features such as pin count or memory size, some add-on boards may not work with all MCU boards, so be sure to look at the the table below which summarizes recommended combinations.

On the X/MEGA side, Xplained kits include the XMEGA-E5 (ATxmega32E5) , XMEGA-C3 (ATxmega384C3), XMEGA-A3BU (ATxmega256A3BU), MEGA-1284P (ATmega1284), XMEGA-A1 (ATxmega128A1) and the XMEGA-B1 (ATxmega128B1 and LCD controller).

Additional Xplained kits include the UC3-A3 (AT32UC3A3256), the SAM4S (SAM4S ARM Cortex-M4), CryptoAuthentication add-on (ATSHA204) , UC3-L0 (picoPower AT32UC3L064), Temperature Sensor Xplained (add-on) and the Sensors Xplained (add-on).

Powering industrial communications with Atmel

Industrial communications are a critical aspect of current-gen automated systems – with defined standards that continue to evolve as new industrial Ethernet protocols emerge. Atmel’s versatile portfolio of microcontrollers (MCUs) provides engineers with the peripherals and internal system architecture required to efficiently interface new products with leading field busses, industrial Ethernet standards and wireless communications.

Field Bus

Atmel offers a dedicated RS485 mode for USART peripherals which is available on most ARM processor-based AT91SAM and AVR 32-bit microcontrollers. Meanwhile, a rich number of DMA channels on Atmel megaAVR, AVR XMEGA, AVR 32-bit and AT91SAM MCUs unload the CPU during industrial communication transfers, with multi-layer bus implementation on Atmel 32-bit microcontrollers enabling true parallel data transfers and effectively minimizing bus load limitation.

In addition, there is an (optional) external bus interface on several Atmel microcontrollers, with up to 32-bit data supports dedicated ASSP for protocols such as Profibus. Plus, up to 12Mbps USART on the SAM3U and SAM9 microcontrollers provides support for external transceivers. In terms of single or dual CAN controllers, select Atmel MCUs are V2.0A and V2.0B standard compliant, supporting independent message objects that are programmable on the fly and ideal for field bus such as CANopen and DeviceNet.

Industrial Ethernet

The vertical integration of management execution systems with factory floor equipment has resulted in the continued convergence of the Ethernet TCP/IP protocol with industrial field busses. As noted above, several industrial Ethernet protocols have emerged, including Profinet, Ethernet/IP, ModbusTCP/IP, EtherCat and Ethernet Powerlink.

“Most industrial Ethernet automated systems do not require compliance with a PLC cycle times lower than a few milliseconds. For these applications, the industrial Ethernet protocol can be cost-effectively implemented in software on a microcontroller with an integrated standard Ethernet MAC peripheral,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Due to their moderate flash size requirement, protocols like Modbus TCP can be implemented in a microcontroller. Atmel offers ARM-based and 32-bit AVR microcontrollers with up to 512KB of flash and an integrated Ethernet MAC unit.”

According to the rep, one of the most noteworthy features includes a 10/100 Ethernet Media Access Controller (EMAC) peripheral with chained buffer Direct Memory Access (DMA). This acts as a master on the internal multi layer bus with multiple internal SRAM blocks – enabling a true parallel data transfer between the Ethernet frames and the application data.

“Atmel’s  SAM9  MPUs are also price-competitive solutions for implementing industrial Ethernet protocols, such as the Ethernet/IP standard, which requires a higher flash size and faster execution time,” the engineering rep continued.

“Atmel’s  SAM9 MPU, like the SAM9G45, offers a variety of benefits, including a 400Mhz clocked ARM926EJ core with 32KB instruction and data caches speed execution time. There is also deterministic execution time with the use of the TCM (Tightly Coupled Memory) interface, enabling access to the internal SRAM with zero wait state at 400MHz. Indeed, by dynamically configuring the SRAM as TCM, Ethernet frames can be analyzed at full speed without any copy to the cache.”

For motion control applications, synchronism and short latency aspects are crucial. Protocols such as Profinet IRT or Ethercat address these requirements and are suited for systems with a sub-millisecond PLC times. In this case, specific ASSP or FPGA solutions must be used. The Atmel SAM9G45, with its dual EBI feature, lets designers integrate the industrial Ethernet communication module with minimal performance impact. Data transfers between the ASIC or FPGA can be handled by the DMA unit, in parallel with external RAM access.

Wireless Communication

Wireless communication in the industrial automation sector is increasingly popular, as it provides an easier way to install and connect mobile or inaccessible equipment. To be sure, industrial control equipment such as PLC and DCS IO modules primarily utilize IEEE802.11 WLAN and Bluetooth standards. And that is one of the reasons Atmel’s 32-bit microcontrollers and microprocessors feature an embedded multimedia card interface which supports connection to an SDIO WLAN or Bluetooth module. In fact, a full reference design based on the Atmel AVR 32-bit microcontroller and the industrial Wifi Module from H&D is available for evaluation and development here, while a Linux-based solution for Atmel SAM9 microcontrollers can be found here.

And last, but certainly not least, industrial sensors and actuators have demanding requirements for power consumption, board space and implementation cost. For these products, IEEE802.15.4 technology, such as Zigbee or Wireless-HART is most appropriate, with Atmel offering complete wireless solutions based on our low-power microcontrollers and RF transceivers. Benefits include excellent RF performance, which enables longer range and more robust RF link, optimized power consumption and lowest system cost.

Additional information about Atmel MCUs that can be used to power a wide range of industrial communication devices is available here.