Echelon introduces FT 5000 Smart Transceiver and FT-X3 Communications Transformer
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The FT 5000 Smart Transceiver is our next-generation chip for smart networks. It is the key product in the LONWORKS® 2.0 platform—the next generation of LONWORKS products designed to greatly increase the power and capability of LONWORKS enabled devices, while lowering development and node costs.
The FT 5000 Smart Transceiver integrates a high-performance Neuron® Core with a free topology twisted-pair transceiver. Combined with the new low-cost FT-X3 Communications Transformer and inexpensive serial memory, the FT 5000 Smart Transceiver provides a lower-cost, higher-performance LONWORKS solution than previous-generation FT Smart Transceivers.
The FT 5000 Smart Transceiver includes three independent 8-bit logical processors to manage the physical MAC layer, the network, and the user application. These are called the Media-Access Control (MAC) processor, the network (NET) processor, and the application (APP) processor, respectively (see Figure 1). At higher system clock rates, there is also a fourth processor to handle interrupts.
Cost-Effective Solution
- ~ 50% reduction in node cost (includes FT 5000 Smart Transceiver, memory, and (separately sold) FT-X3 communication transformer) from previous generation implementation
- Inexpensive serial memory devices as external non-volatile memory LNS FX and LonMaker FX network management tools eliminate the need for credits for commissioning devices using FT 5000 chips
FT-X3 Communications Transformer
The FT-X3 Communications Transformer is a surface mount communications transformer that’s compatible with both the FT 5000 Smart Transceiver and the previous-generation FT 3120/FT 3150 Smart Transceivers and used to design a LonWorks node.
Cost-Effective Development Resources
The Mini FX Evaluation Kit and the NodeBuilder FX Development Tool lets you develop LonWorks devices using the FT 5000 Smart Transceiver. The Mini FX Evaluation Kit is an excellent vehicle for evaluating the technology and developing simple LonWorks devices, whereas the NodeBuilder FX Development Tool supports more sophisticated device development. These tools use the same hardware, providing a lower-cost, software-only migration option from the evaluation kit to the development tool.
Features
- • 3.3V operation.
- Higher-performance Neuron® Core —internal system clock scales up to 80MHz
- Substantial device price reduction
- Serial memory interface for inexpensive external EEPROM and flash non-volatile memories
- Supports up to 254 Network Variables (NVs) and 127 aliases
- Low-cost surface mount FT-X3 Communications Transformer
- User-programmable interrupts provide faster response time to external events
- Includes hardware UART with 16-byte receive and transmit FIFOs.
- 7 mm x 7 mm 48-pin QFN package
- Supports polarity-insensitive free topology star, daisy chain, bus, loop, or mixed topology wiring
- Compliant with TP/FT-10 channels using FT 3120®/FT 3150® Smart Transceivers and FTT-10/FTT-10A/LPT-10/LPT-11 Transceivers
- 12 I/O pins with 35 programmable standard I/O models
- Supports up to 42KB of application code space
- 64KB RAM (44KB user-accessible) and 16KB ROM on-chip memories