[VicPiMakers Projects] Application for Raspberry Pico

[George Bowden]

Looking for an application for my Raspberry Picos, I've been rethinking my
serial LAN bus which was based on RS485.

Given that

   - Ethernet is the most common LAN
   - Most of my alarm sensors only transmit data,
   - Many of my uControllers don't have wifi

I am considering transmitting UDP packets of sensor data to an always-on
RPI 2B+ alarm center over Cat5 cable.  I'd use one twisted pair of the cat5
at 5v for powering the 3.3v uController.

This can be achieved with no external modules or components at 10mbps, I
believe, by a Raspberry Pi Pico
EtherPIC | Hackaday.io <https://hackaday.io/project/168551-etherpic> did
this with PICs, but the Pico's  DMA, state machines, and programmable IO
(PIO) and the faster speed might make it possible without the external XOR
gates.  This is more than a blinky project, and is probably a healthy
challenge for anyone joining in.  You will need only a Pico and a cat5
cable.

Published Pico projects contain some of the needed programming elements.
https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples#readme

The CAT5 cable might even be bussed, given its only UDP that is
transmitted, and a lost packet due to a collision is unimportant. Watch out
for reflections though.
-- 
George Bowden  250-893-7423
Victoria BC
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://vicpimakers.ca/pipermail/projects_vicpimakers.ca/attachments/20210406/da98f716/attachment.htm>