Quote:
Originally Posted by sawickm
Why couldn’t the Micro Controller be placed on a separate daughter card e.g. “Stamp” or “Adrino”. Then it could be upgraded as needed?
A standard interface PCB would be used with the different Micro Controller daughter cards to makup the complete controller.
That concept would also allow different Microcontrollers to be used, e.g. dsPIC, STM32, ARM, etc…..
Just a thought that I have been kicking around for awhile ???
-Mark  |
That is a possibility. The dsPIC30 and dsPIC33 chips are almost completely pin compatible. So making daughterboards to support them would be pretty easy. Just maybe a couple of small changes. The daughterboard could be made as a DIP40 or something or maybe some sort of custom pin configuration. However, the pin layouts for STM32 and ARM chips would be likely very different and the daughterboards would have really weird trace patterns. It might be able to be done though. Also, another problem, though not insurmountable, is that the oscillator for the processor has to be really close and tightly coupled to the processor. So the daughterboards would likely need the crystal and caps right on the board.
It is an interesting idea. I don't think I'd really be interested in doing it. It complicates things which I seem to be doing enough of as it is.