August 8, 2005

Parts have been shipped

EZL-80 from Data Flow Systems has arrived recently so our parts requirements are almost met.  The EZL-80 provides a valuable service to the flow of our project.  It handles the interface to a PCMCIA card, which is a mature technology giving an adequate signal range for data transmission.  It also handles the protocol stacks, drivers, and signal processing to provide a basic serial signal in TTL level to a microcontroller.

CAN transceivers were received weeks ago.  CAN (Controller Area Network) will enable us to limit the number of pins we use on the robot microcontroller to enable future add-ons without removing features such as the wireless interface we are attempting to add.  

CAN4USB tool was received less than two weeks ago.  This is a USB device that comes with useful software to debug the signals that are being sent using the CAN interface.  Also, the computer software can send CAN messages for testing of individual CAN components.  This tool is made by Zanthic.

The only component missing from our required parts list is a PCMCIA socket that will provide a pinout for direct connection between a PCMCIA card and the EZL-80.  We have ordered this from Digikey and it should arrive within the next two days.

A photo of the EZL-80

>> View Parts list and project flowchart