DC1819A

Evaluation and Demonstration Boards and Kits have already become an important part of many professional applications and students’ experimentations in electronic engineering and other areas. The DC1819A, launched by Analog Devices, extends the applications and functionalities of such boards and kits. It is based on the I2C Master/Slave descriptor evaluation board, and provides an easy-to-use demonstration system to define, configure and manage I2C buses.

The DC1819A consists of a user interface board and a slave board. The user interface board equips a breadboard area for connecting external components, as well as the two I2C host ports. The slave board houses a total of 8 I2C slaves, making up the master/slave networking configuration. Along with the DC1819A comes a software package that allows the user to configure communication speeds, connection types and memory mappings. The surrounding software and firmware also provide a simplified interface to manage the network of I2C slaves. This helps reducing the complexity for large-scale systems.

The most common application for DC1819A is in electronic project demonstration. Within a single system, multiple external components and modules can work independently and can communicate with each other in a master/slave configuration. This simplifies prototyping and rapidly reduces development time and costs. On the other hand, students can freely and comprehensively study bus configuration, master/slave communications and I2C performance with a single system.

For the core functionality of the DC1819A, the control and communication between the user interface board and the slaves are mainly based on I2C, a two-wire protocol with Message Transfer Protocol (MTP). With this protocol, the user can send commands and the connected slaves’ responses will be received through the same port. It also has the capability of 10-bit addressing, allowing up to 1024 slaves connected to one I2C Bus at same time. Along with the User Interface Board and the I2C Slaves, some extensions such as the temperature alarm module, touch key, and resistive touch panel, can also be connected to the master board.

Apart from the application in project demonstration, DC1819A is also applicable in application development. It provides a starting point for application programming development, as the user can easily set up and configure the bus communication using the embedded software on the interface board. The relevant components on the interface board can also be activated and configured from the user application program. Last but not least, its flexibility in connection types and memory sizes makes it a perfect choice for large-scale I2C applications.

Taken together, the DC1819A gives Electronic Engineers and students a powerful tool to prototyping or developing large-scale I2C projects. It is also an educational tool to investigate and explore the vast possibilities of the I2C systems.