Double Your
USB Pleasure
With Cerebot
by Fred Eady
www.servomagazine.com/index.php?/magazine/article/october2011_Eady
What is better than a brand new Cerebot 32MX7? Two Cerebot 32MX7s! If
you’ve followed my projects over the years, you know that it took quite a while
for me to give a hug to USB. Despite the fact that I believe that RF engineers
participate in pointy hat antics that relate to the zodiac, I have a fondness for
RF projects. So, this month I’m going to shelve our Cerebot 32MX7 USB
adventure in favor of a Cerebot 32MX7 802.15.4 project. Now you know why a
pair of Cerebot 32MX7s are necessary. We’ve got some serious 32-bit RF
embedded computing to do. So, let’s get to it.
The MFB
You can think of the Digilent PmodRF2 as an MFB, or
Magnetic Field Bender. The PmodRF2 is based on the
Microchip MRF24J40 IEEE 802.15.4 2. 4 GHz RF transceiver
IC. Our little Digilent MFB is capable of altering magnetic
fields to accommodate ZigBee and proprietary Microchip
Mi Wi networking protocols. All we need to do to initiate
the field bending is a PIC microcontroller that is capable of
communicating via the SPI protocol. In that the Cerebot
32MX7 is based on the 32-bit PIC32MX795F512L, SPI
portals are absolutely no problem.
PHOTO 1. The PmodRF2 is based on
the Microchip MRF24J40 2. 4 GHz
transceiver IC. Everything necessary
to participate in an 802.15.4-based
network including the antenna is
soldered to the PmodRF2's copper-clad fiberglass printed circuit board.
48 SERVO 10.2011
