ITC232-A
Intelligent Serial Interface Multi-Function Data Acquisition & Control IC

The ITC232-A is an integrated circuit containing a general purpose serial/parallel interface, as well as, a number of embedded functions which find applications in data acquisition and control systems. It provides easy access, from a terminal or computer serial port (via RS-232C), to 32 input/output lines arranged in 5 ports which can be read or written with extremely simple ASCII commands (complex communication protocols are not required.) This allows control from within a custom written program as well as from any commercial communication software package (terminal for Windows � , Procomm � , Telix � , MAC240�, etc).The possibility of sending commands to the ITC232-A from any terminal program is very convenient for system debugging before writing a custom program .The IC is hardware platform independent; it will work with any terminal or computer with an RS-232 serial port. The link requires 3 wires and operates at any standard speed between 300 and 115200 Bauds. The only external components required by the ITC232-A are a voltage driver to handle the RS-232 voltages and a 3.6864 MHz crystal. In addition to serial/parallel/serial interfacing, the ITC232-A displays several other functions.

Features of the ITC232-A:

Interface Simplicity:

ASCII commands and data are sent over the serial port (in either Decimal, Hexadecimal or Binary format.)
Easy to interface to any serial port via RS232/422/423/485 links.
Remote (modem) or local control. Remote operation is possible via a phone link using a modem chip in place of the RS-232 voltage driver.
ITC232-A can be used with popular terminal and data acquisition software packages.
A downloadable DLL is available for controlling the ITC232-A.

Flexible I/O

3 general purpose 8 bit I/O ports.
24 I/O pins can be configured as IN or OUT.
All I/O pins provide read back verification.
Serial and parallel data I/O (SPI).

Powerful Built-in Functions:

Direct measurement of relative capacitance or resistance.
Three stepping motor ports with all the necessary logic to instrument monophasic, biphasic and half-step stepping modes. Emphasis has been placed in making the stepper interface easy to use. Stepping rates from 10 to 4000 steps/second.
Variable width/frequency pulse (PWM) generation (10-10000 Hz, 0-100% duty cycle).
Built in Help functions.
A 1 keystroke "Again" command to repeat the previous command.
High and Low multiple interrupt recognition via 2 pins; IRQH and IRQL.
Hardware and software selectable Baud rate over the 300-115200 range.
Four channels for reading relative resistance or capacitance.
On-screen help (a summary of all commands is sent to the terminal).
A configuration report feature which sends the active configuration of any parallel port, the PWM or the stepper motor ports back to the terminal.

The ITC232-A: Your Solutions Building Block

dia-itc232.gif (11582 bytes)

RMV Electronics offers custom engineering services such as hardware or PC software development for our existing products

To explore the functionality of the ITC232-A chip please download the simulator below and then self extract ITC_SIM.EXE into 3 files: SIM.EXE (the simulator itself), SIM.TXT (the tutorial running within the simulator) and SIM.PIF.

For more information about available software examples, application notes, product simulations & evaluations and other product manuals go to the Download page.