Ethernet shield for Serial communication

Created Thu, 28 Nov 2013 04:29:23 +0000 by BananaSlug

BananaSlug

Thu, 28 Nov 2013 04:29:23 +0000

Hello everyone

I currently have a project that runs on the MAX 32 that will control a stepper motor. All my controls are passed using the Serial communication(UART 1A).

What I am looking to do next is gonna be super overkill but I would like to send these serial commands over the Ethernet port on the Networking shield. First is it even possible to simply send an arbitrary short message over Ethernet?

I am interested in doing this because than I can use a single Ethernet cable to address approximately 12 different Networking shields.

Can someone give me a good place to start? I've downloaded the Microchip Peripheral Libraries and am looking at the TCPIP examples specifically the Demo App. However from what I can see this does not necessarily read packets from the Ethernet cable.

Any thoughts or direction would be helpful.

Thank you,

Ash

Jacob Christ

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:30:00 +0000

This is very possible, and I wouldn't say that its overkill at all but extremely practical. You can use the AccelStep library to control the stepper. I wish I had a simple example that is working but I don't. You simply need to open a port and stream data to a parser to control the motor. Look at the Ethernet telnet examples (which are not actually telnet but more like a simple chat program).

Our team is working on some samples and I'll put this on our list of things to do.

Jacob

BananaSlug

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 05:03:44 +0000

Thanks for your reply Jacob,

I already have the Stepper portion of the project working. I am simply looking to make talk over Ethernet instead of UART/USB.

Where can I find the Ethernet telnet examples? I want to be able to simply call a function similar to getC() and printf(). However I understand that may not be as simple as that.

Thanks you

Jacob Christ

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 14:14:57 +0000

They should come with the Ethernet libraries from the Digilent web site. They work just like the Serial object and they are pretty easy to use. You just need to set your IP address, MAC address, port and do a Client.begin(); Then you can use Client.available() and Client.read().

Jacob

BananaSlug

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 18:05:09 +0000

So I found the files you are talking about. They have a couple examples however they are all .pde files which I have never worked with and MPLAB x doesnt seem to recognize them.

I also am concerned because I have written all of my code in C and the main files are all in C++. Can MPLAB X compile projects that are in two languages? I doubt it but that would be pretty cool.

Thanks for your continued support.

Jacob Christ

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 18:13:33 +0000

If you look around the forum I think you can find posts where where people have gotten chipKIT MPIDE code to work in MPIDE. I've never tried.

Jacob