Someone on usenet asked about communications between MCUs. It got me thinking about eval kits. None of them have more than one MCU! What about an eval/training board that had a bunch of small MCUs as "nodes", connected to a CPLD as the "network", and all that connected to a larger MCU that can program and monitor them?
For example, the R8C/1B I use in my furnace has a small uart for programming and console, leaving the big uart and spi/i2c pins free. Connect the programming/console pins to an M32C (which has seven serial ports), and the rest to a CPLD. Let the M32C program all the R8Cs and the CPLD, and monitor the console ports, as well as talk to a PC. Presto! Instant mcu network eval board. At five I/O pins per R8C, and six R8Cs, that's 30 I/O pins - a small CPLD can easily cross-switch them all together. Ok, back to what I'm *supposed* to be doing... ;-) _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
