Concepts for transmitting data from a PC to a microcontroller:

Technical Topic Report Ryan Kittredge 20, November 2003 1. Parallel Port Interface: The parallel port is a 25 pin connector on your computer that is commonly known as the printer port, LPT1 or LPT2. This port is nice because it is relatively easy to manipulate it with software and the data is transmitted using standard TTL 0 5V signals. Another pro to using this port is there is no need for additional hardware to put the signal back together so that it can be loaded into the microcontroller. The one major drawback for our project is that the parallel port hogs up a lot of pins and that can be a problem when youre dealing with a 16 pin microcontroller. To utilize the parallel interface we would need 8 pins for the data transmission, 1 pin is an IRQ which signals that the data is ready and clocks it through, 1 pin to signal whether the data transmission was an address or actual data because we are employing multiple microcontrollers, and 1 pin to send a signal back to the PC telling it that the current task has been accomplished and it is ready for the next instruction. Now just to transmit data to the microcontroller we need 11 pins and 2 pins are power and ground, so that only leaves 3 pins on port A to control our motor, which is enough for now, but cuts down on capability for future expansion. This is a pin out diagram of the DB25 parallel port connector.

The following table lists the function of each pin in the DB25 connector as they pertain to a printer connection. The most useful part is the direction of signal flow for our application, as well as knowing whether the bit is inverted or not.

This next table lists the base addresses for the status, control and data registers of LPT1 and LPT2.

2. Serial Port Interface: The RS232 serial port is another option for transmitting data between the PC and the microcontroller. One of the major functions of the serial port is to put data into a serial format so that it can be transmitted via modem. One of the functions that we use it for is to download programs that have been compiled on a PC to run on a microcontroller. The one good feature is that the RS232 would only need three wires between the PC and the microcontroller. One line is data transmit, one line is data receive, and the last line is a common ground between the two devices. The draw backs to using RS232 are that it uses negative logic where a 1 is -3V to -12V and a 0 is +3V to +12V and the region from -3V to 3V is undefined. The microcontroller uses standard TTL logic so the RS232 signal has to be sent through another device to convert the negative logic back to TTL. This adds hardware to the system which adds difficulty to production. Two choices for hardware would be a MAX232 chip which converts the negative logic to TTL and keeps the data in a serial format. This requires you to run a RS232 program in the microcontroller to decode the

serial transmission back into bytes that the microcontroller to manipulate and to do this the software utilizes the timer, so anytime data is sent the microcontroller has to stop using the timer for other functions. The other choice would be a chip called an UART which stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver / Transmitter. This chip receives the RS232 transmission and reformats it into TTL 8-bit words and then transfers the data to the microcontroller by parallel transmission. Now we are hogging the pins on the microcontroller again. This is a picture of the pin out of the RS232 connector.

This next table lists the addresses of the RS232 COM ports.

This is a sample of RS232 data transmission.

3. I 2 C Data Communication Inter- Integrated Circuit

I 2 C is a type of serial communication that was developed by Phillips in the late 70s as

a means of communication between different devices within an appliance that they produced. This technology is widely used today in items such as automobiles, televisions, telephones, cell phones and all kinds of different electronic devices. It appeals to people because it is a two wire bus that allows data transmission between multiple devices. One wire is the SCL which stands for Serial CLock line and the other is the SDA or Serial DAta line. This would be good for our application because we would use the PC as the master controller of the data bus which basically means that it will supply the clock signal to clock the data into the microcontroller. This system uses standard TTL signals and the microcontroller wouldnt be bogged down performing other functions trying to retrieve data. The only real problem with this system is that software would have to be written for the PC to handle these functions of clocking one line and putting data on the other. The software would utilize two pins from the parallel port for transmission. This is a risk for us because well kind of be making our own I 2 C system that wont have all of the features of the I 2 C specification, and will only perform the tasks that we will require. Some debugging will probably be required, but after talking to some people it seemed like this was very possible and might be our best solution to the problem.

This is a table of terminology associated with I 2 C data transmission.

The following is a sample of data transfer on the I 2 C bus.

For more information on any of these concepts look at these references: Ball, Stuart R, P.E., Embedded Microprocessor Systems: Real World Design Third Edition. Elsevier Science (USA), 2002. Held, Gilbert, The Complete Modem Reference Third Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997.

Morton, Todd D., Embedded Microcontrollers. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2001. Paret, Dominique, The I 2 C Bus From Theory to Practice. West Sussex, England, 1997. Internet References: www.semiconductors.phillips.com www.beyondlogic.org www.fairchildsemi.com www.kmitl.ac.th/~kswichit/MAX232/MAX232.htm www.logix4u.net/parallelport1.htm