During a product development it is not always clear what you require in the final product until you are well into the development. With a traditional development you purchase the parts that you think that you will need and then have to work within those parts and tools to complete the project. This often results in rats nests of wires, components stuck onto extra boards etc. With the PROton range of modular products you can simply add additional peripheral or memory boards as required during the development. If we do not supply the particular part that you need simply purchase our Prototype card and add it yourself, keeping everything tidy within the stack of boards. Once the product has been designed and tested then we offer a full design and customisation service for your final product.
PROton Embedded Controllers
The PROton range of Embedded Controllers are designed to be low in cost and extremely flexible to use. They are based around an ARM Cortex-M microcontroller.
The smallest member of the family, the PROton PR-25 has low power Cortex-M0+ microcontroller at the heart of the system, the other members utilise a Cortex-M4 core. Physically it is just 60mm x 67mm in size but it is still a serious contender with 256 k-bytes of in-built flash memory and 32 k- bytes of static RAM clocked at up to 48 MHz. The module supports 12-bit digital to analogue conversion, 16-bit analogue to digital converters, Real Time Clock and a touch sensing module. Able to interface externally to SPI, i2c, UART, USB, analogue or digital inputs it can be used with most external devices. For power sensitive operations the module has nine low power modes and many internal devices can operate independently of the core reducing the amount of time that the core needs to be running keeping power consumption even lower.
The next member of the family is the PROton PR-40. This is based around an ARM Cortex M4 core running at up to 100 MHz. With up to 512 k-bytes of programmable memory and 64 k-bytes RAM there is plenty of on device storage. Features include timers/counters, programmable gain amplifier, analogue comparators, 2 independent ADC modules, touch sensing interface, segment display controller, a flexible external bus interface and up to 100 general purpose 5V tolerant I/O channels. On the serial front it supports CAN, i2c, i2s, SPI, UART, Secure Digital host controller (SDHC) and full/low speed USB OTG. The PROton PR-40 is a larger format board than the PROton PR-25.
The PROton PR60 replaces the PR40’s segment LCD with an IEEE 1588 Ethernet module and a hardware encryption module supporting CRC checking, random number generator, hardware encryption supporting DES, 3DES, AES, MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-256 algorithms.
All of the embedded controller modules with the PROton range are supported by the free Kinetis Design Studio or popular development tools provided by IAR or Keil. The larger boards support the freely available MQX Real Time Multitasking operating system, the PROton PR-25 supports the reduced function MQXLite version. Our PROton Development System packages all the freely available tools with our PROton Programmer enabling you to quickly get started on your project.
Off-the-shelf Expander boards for the PROton range of controllers include memory expansions, relays, opto-isolated inputs, SD cards, 4-20mA input and outputs and prototype boards. Embedded Controller modules can be used with one or several Expanders at a time. Once you have finalised your application we offer a full customised design and build service enabling you to integrate everything into your own format.
Custom Design Services
Our engineers have been working in the field of electronic systems design for many years and have a wealth of experience and expertise that you can rely on. Whether it is a control system, a data logger, an instrument or a PLC that you require we will be able to assist you.
We offer a comprehensive design service which includes custom hardware, bespoke software and custom build. You will be surprised how little a custom design costs.
Design Case Study
A supplier of wash room equipment approached us with a problem. They wanted to be able to monitor and control the usage of water in an installation of mobile wash room pods with the option of being able to expand the system for use the system in other business sectors.
Using our PROton PR-25 and a Prototype board they developed an application to open valves to allow a set amount of water to flow for each operation of the switch. This was expanded to allow four switches operating four valves, two controlling the hot and cold water to a wash basin, a third for a toilet flush the fourth for a shower unit. Simply by connecting some units together several units could be monitored from a central point. Reports could then be generated indicating how much water was being used by each unit. On the back of getting the initial reports they found that they could quickly detect leakages enabling water savings to be made. They could also detect blocked facilities and even dirty facilities – these were the ones that were not being used as frequently.
On moving into other business sectors they found that they could restrict the amount of times that a water source could be used within a period of time, for example, to prevent deliberate flooding of facilities. Also by detecting abnormal usage they could alert staff to check on people who were either using too much water or not enough water.
Once the development work was completed we took their sketch circuits and our PROton PR-25 and produced a single circuit board to fit within their enclosure. We then got the units manufactured and supplied to our client.
For more details on our products and services please visit www.cms.uk.com or telephone 01371 606050.
