Published July 2001

FINE TUNING AN EMBEDDED IDEA

Part 1: The Land of BL2000
by Fred Eady

Start • Z-World’s BL2000 • C Me… • Lock and Load • Acquire the Voltage Data • Transport and Display the Voltage Data • Just the Beginning • Sources and PDF

JUST THE BEGINNING

I’ve just shown you only a couple of the features of the Z-World BL2000. I also tested a feature that I hope you’ll never have to use. Late one night while writing this article, I accidentally put a couple of amps through the DAC circuitry. That little mistake also crippled the ADC reference voltage. Fortunately, I was able to remove and replace the tiny but now smokeless DAC ICs myself. If I can do that, you or your technicians can too. That’s a big plus when downtime is a concern.

I whacked the entire ADC and DAC area and had to do a "midnight" manual re-calibration. I was sort of careful and still achieved a 1% accuracy in my readings. The BL2000 comes calibrated from the factory, and the actual readings before I blew the smoke out would surely have been more accurate as they probably calibrated the outgoing units while wide awake.

If I weren’t out of virtual paper, I could extend this voltage reading transmission idea to include reading and writing the Z-World BL2000’s digital I/O ports over the Internet. Or, I could do some RS-485-to-Internet data transfers. If you don’t need to gather data or control devices remotely using TCP/IP and Ethernet, then serve some web pages or send e-mails with the facilities found on the Z-World BL2000 and within Dynamic C Premier.

Hopefully, I’ve shown you a way to solve a problem or sparked an idea for you to expand. In either case, there’s more of this technology to talk about. So, keep your eyes on Circuit Cellar Online until next time when we’ll take yet another adventurous journey down the river Internet.

PREVIOUS • NEXT