Digilent 410-174P - Manual (Page 2)

USB I/O Explorer Reference Manual
www.digilentinc.com page 2 of 17
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•
4 position DIP switch
•
2 rotary encoders with integral push
button
•
speaker/buzzer
• two 10-bit A/D inputs
• four 12-bit D/A outputs
•
up to 52 digital input/output pins
•
connectors for up to 8 RC servos
•
1 hardware SPI master port
•
up to 3 additional software SPI master
ports
• UART interface port
• provision for 4 additional RC servos
using Digilent PmodCON3
•
provision for 2 additional quadrature
encoders via Pmod connector
•
provision for up to 8 additional 10-bit
A/D inputs using servo connectors
•
multiple power supply options, including
USB powered
•
ESD protection and short circuit
protection for all I/O pins.
Functional Description
The Digilent USB I/O Explorer is a
microcontroller board that is designed to be
used as a USB peripheral device to expand the
I/O capabilities of a PC running either the
Microsoft Windows operating system or the
Linux operating system. The Digilent Adept
Software System provides the run-time
software for operation of the board, and the
Digilent Adept Software Development Kit
(SDK) allows the user to write custom
application software to access and control its
features. The Digilent Adept SDK comes with a
variety of sample programs that illustrate
operation of various features of the I/O
Explorer.
The I/O Explorer provides a number of built-in
I/O devices, such as switches, push buttons,
LEDs, rotary encoders, and a speaker/buzzer.
It also provides a number of connectors that
allow access to and control of devices external
to the I/O Explorer.
Operation of the I/O Explorer board as a
Digilent Adept compatible device requires the
installation of the Digilent Adept software
available for download from the Digilent web
site: www.digilentinc.com. In addition to
downloading and installing the Digilent Adept
software, the Digilent Adept SDK must be
downloaded and installed in order to make
effective use of the board.
In addition to the Digilent Adept SDK, the user
will require some software development tool
that allows writing application programs on the
target operating system. The Digilent Adept
System uses the C programming language
calling conventions and any development tool
that provides the ability to call C functions in a
DLL (on Windows) or a shared library (on
Linux) can be used. Some version of Microsoft
Visual Studio is commonly used on Windows,
and some version of the GCC tool chain is
normally used on Linux.
In addition to the primary design purpose of
being a dedicated USB peripheral device, the
I/O Explorer can also be used as a
microcontroller development board. The I/O
Explorer contains two Atmel AVR
microcontrollers: IC1, the primary
microcontroller is an AT90USB646 AVR
microcontroller with USB capability; IC2, the
secondary microcontroller is an ATmega165P
AVR device.
Development of custom firmware to run on the
I/O Explorer requires the use of some
development tool that supports the Atmel AVR
microcontroller family. The most common tool
used is the free Atmel AVR Studio IDE and
assembler available for download from the
Atmel web site. The free GCC based WinAVR
C compiler system can be used with Atmel’s
AVR Studio and provides a very powerful C
language programming environment. WinAVR
is available for free download from the internet
from various sources.
In addition to the development tool software,
using the I/O Explorer as a microcontroller
development platform requires a programming
cable, or in-system-debugger to load the user
firmware into the microcontroller. The I/O
Explorer is designed to allow use of the Atmel