Content originally posted in LPCWare by jmitchel on Wed Dec 28 05:41:27 MST 2011
Quote: Rob65
I agree with Zero, use the FT232RL and let it provide the power to your opto isolators.
I am a bit concerned about the 'high voltage' it is connected to in the product.
How high is this voltage?
Peak about 600V. Average is 500V.
Quote: Rob65
If there are any electric signals nearby (if even on the same PCB) that can carry high voltage spikes then you may want to be a bit more elaborate on your DC decouplings. Just a simple 0.1 uF capacitor at the chip might not be enough. Use a larger capacitor at the reset switch and have the lines between switch and chip as short as possible to prevent sporadic resets. Use RF chokes on your power supply, have chokes and small capacitors on all I/O pins and - very important - adapt your PCB design to your needs.
Very good advise. I have had many problems including cables winding
around the board housing that then induce spikes on reset line.
You may notice the 1nF on the reset line - just a precaution.
This is all custom one off R&D jig stuff built in lots of modules until all the bits are working to put together the final product.
Quote: Rob65
I have a CNC controller board where the first version had just simple RC filtering on all I/Os and no special board design - from time to time the board would just reset, resulting in a hanging PC connection (and these were just high voltage spikes < 1 kV from the servo controllers).
The new board has a special choke on the USB line (I forgot the component number but it's a special USB choke from Würth Electronics), a separate section on the board with an isolated DC/DC converter and separate sections on the board for microcontroller+USB, power supply and I/O section.
Thank you for that note - I have had endless problems with USB resetting
due to the most minute leaks through paths I know not where.
Eventually I settled on 100% optical isolation and serial RS232 as the only
thing that works. Out of frustration I settled for that, but ideally I would like
a lot faster interface such as the USB taking readings running into megabytes
per second.
Quote: Rob65
Use a 4-layer PCB and make sure that the ground and power sections of your RS232, your microcontroller and your other (high voltage) electronics are strictly separated.
If by high voltage you mean [I]high [/I]voltage > 1 kV then prepare to take special attention to which opto isolators you are using UL1577 rated isolators are only for normal 3-phase main (400V) applications.
Regards,[INDENT]Rob
[/INDENT]
Thanks again Rob for the advise.
JM