Power-line soft-modem development kit
Microchip Technology Power-Line Modem (PLM) PICtail Plus Daughter Board Development Kit includes a 7.2 kbps software modem that enables low-cost communication and control in industrial and consumer applications.
Microchip Technology Power-Line Modem (PLM) PICtail Plus Daughter Board Development Kit (part # AC164142) enables customers to easily incorporate power-line communication into their products, the company said. The power-line soft-modem technology supported by the PLM PICtail plus daughter board enables consumer and industrial products to communicate using the same wiring that provides power, which creates an instant network at a low system and deployment cost. Based upon the scalable dsPIC33F Digital Signal Controller (DSC) architecture, the board uses a Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation scheme and operates in the popular consumer frequency band.
The trend towards power-line communication is growing in response to increasing market demands for connected products, Microchip said. Applications for power-line communication can be found everywhere that energy flows, such as in-home energy monitoring and control, industrial power-supply controllers, server farms, street lighting and more. Microchip’s PLM PICtail Plus Daughter Board Development Kit comes with two nodes, providing point-to-point communication out of the box, meaning customers can have the PLM PICtail Plus daughter board running a selection of demos in minutes. The BPSK scheme provides a robust modulation method that performs well in noisy environments, and the data rate of the power-line soft modem can be selected in software. Additionally, having many to choose from allows the customer to select a device that matches the requirements of their application, and that optimizes performance and cost.
“Microchip is expanding its capabilities in communications and connectivity by offering this new, low-cost power-line carrier reference design,” said Sumit Mitra, vice president of Microchip’s High-Performance Microcontroller Division. “As applications for power-line modems continue to grow, we are supporting customers’ needs by offering this consumer-band design based upon our popular PICtail Plus and Explorer 16 development systems.”
The PLM PICtail Plus Daughter Board includes two daughter boards and two sets of high-voltage adapter cables. It comes with royalty-free schematics, demo code and software in source-code format, and is supported by the free MPLAB IDE. The board can be purchased today, at microchipDirect (https://www.microchip.com/get/2DMR). The soft modem interfaces with Microchip’s Explorer 16 Development Board and is supported with royalty-free schematics, demo code and software in source-code format, all of which is available for download at https://www.microchip.com/get/FTWN.
Microchip Technology Inc. provides microcontroller, analog and Flash-IP solutions to many industries, including manufacturers and machine builders.
Microchip Technology Inc.
– Edited by Kelsey Kirkley, Control Engineering, www.controleng.com
Do you have experience and expertise with the topics mentioned in this content? You should consider contributing to our CFE Media editorial team and getting the recognition you and your company deserve. Click here to start this process.
