chipKIT® Development Platform

Inspired by Arduino™

uno32, PmodShield and PmodNIC100

Created Fri, 11 May 2012 16:56:21 +0000 by ecstrim


ecstrim

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:56:21 +0000

Hello everybody,

I come here after playing with an Arduino Uno Ethernet, board that I have programmed very easily with the provided ide. I have to mention that I have very limited knowledge of C universe. I am trying to build a board who can connect to a lan network and send some data to a server via HTTP and with the Arduino board this was very easy to do.

Now I have bought a ChipKit uno32, a pmod shield and a pmod nic100, thinking that it can be programed almost as easy as the Arduino board was. I am using the latest version of the Mpide.

My problem is that I have no clue about how to use the pmod and I cannot find any instructions or documentation. I have downloaded the Microchip libraries, found the TCPIP stack folder but I don't understand how can I use it with the mpide.

Please help? :?:

Thanks for your time.


Ryan K

Fri, 11 May 2012 22:04:20 +0000

Hello,

We actually have libraries for that configuration currently being tested. As soon as they are found to be satisfactory we will release them and I'll post a link on this post.

Best Regards, Ryan K Digilent


ecstrim

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:11:37 +0000

Thank you Ryan, could you estimate how long could it take before releasing that library (weeks, months, years)?


Ryan K

Tue, 15 May 2012 06:50:46 +0000

Hello,

I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks :) (although it may take up to a month or two) I plan to go through and test those libraries thoroughly tomorrow.

Best Regards, Ryan K Digilent


claudiug

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 07:37:04 +0000

Hi, Just download the zip file containing the libraries found for example at [url]http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,401,1003&Prod=PMOD-NIC100[/url]. In MPIDE, go to File->Preferences and get the location of the sketchbook folder. Unzip the file above in that folder, so that all those directories DNETcK, PmodNIC100, NetworkShield are right in the sketchbook folder. Exit MPIDE, then reopen it.

To use the libraries...for example, for PmodNIC100 you can open in MPIDE the file from directory DNETcK/examples/TCPEchoServerPmodNIC100/TCPEchoServerPmodNIC100.pde. Make sure that on your Uno32 board the PmodNIC100 is connected to the JC connector (see the readme associated with the example). Write the example to the board after setting your IP/port for server. If you can ping the IP you're almost there. Now start the Serial monitor and select 9600baud (this rewrites the board I think) and you should see:

"TCPEchoServer 1.0 Digilent, Copyright 2011

Started Listening Listening on port: 44300"

find an echo client (first entry of a google search is [url]http://www.paulgriffiths.net/program/c/echoclnt.php[/url]) and connect to the server on the port you want.

If you don't see the "Listening on port: 44300" line, but "Something went wrong ...", then you're quitting in tcpServer.isListening(). Change "state=EXIT" to "state=CLOSE" under the else statement and it should work (not sure why this is needed, would like to know, though)

Does anyone know on how to use the PmodNIC100 to implement a simple DHCP client?

Hope this helps, Claudiu


ecstrim

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:37:04 +0000

Thanks Claudiu, your answer was very helpful.


rahtune

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 06:45:14 +0000

Hi,

I'm currently using the Basys2 with the PmodNIC100. I would like to create a LAN in order to send and receive data through the NIC100. I have been following the instructions that Claudiuggave, but i don't understand the "after setting your IP/port for server" part. How to do that?

Can anyone help me?


Jacob Christ

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:19:35 +0000

Hi, I'm currently using the Basys2 with the PmodNIC100. I would like to create a LAN in order to send and receive data through the NIC100. I have been following the instructions that Claudiuggave, but i don't understand the "after setting your IP/port for server" part. How to do that? Can anyone help me?

> If you can ping the IP you're almost there.

ping is a program that send packets from one computer to another over ethernet to check to see if it is there. The command usually looks like this:

ping 192.168.1.200

This command is available in linux and windows command lines.

> Now start the Serial monitor and select 9600baud (this rewrites the board I think) and you should see:

The serial monitor is part of the MPIDE (the icon in the top right hand corner of the window).

Jacob


GeneApperson

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:23:44 +0000

The PmodNIC100 provides a 10/100 Ethernet MAC/PHY with an SPI interface using a Microchip ENC424J600. It doeesn't provide any network stack support on the module.

The Basys2 is an FPGA board that has a Spartan 3E FPGA on it. In order to use the PmodNIC100 to connect to a network, you would need to either implement a TCP/IP stack in gates in the FPGA (probably an impossible task), or implement a processor core and then port an existing TCP/IP stack to run on that processor (an extremely non-trivial task).

The Digilent chipKIT Network Library supports the PmodNIC100 on chipKIT and MPIDE compatible boards. Using the Microchip Application Library, it would be possible to get the PmodNIC100 to work with most PIC microcontroller based boards (including the Digilent Cerebot boards).

We don't currently provide any support for plaforms other than those describe above. We're working on our own network stack library that will be open source, but it's not going to be released any time soon.

Gene Apperson Digilent