Evaluation board supports design of twisted pair building automation networks

ON Semiconductor and NXP jointly introduced an evaluation board and complete reference design for power efficient twisted pair (TP) networks. The evaluation board, which will be available in May, is undergoing the final phases of formal KNX certification.

The development board has been specifically designed to assist building automation customers by simplifying their design process with a ready-to-implement, energy efficient KNX TP solution for applications such as lighting switches and control, HVAC control, shutters and occupancy detection, announced ON Semiconductor. "By teaming up with NXP, we were able to jointly create a complete, power efficient solution that enables customers to reduce both their development costs and time to market for KNX applications based on Cortex-M processor family", said Ryan Cameron, vice president of Industrial and Timing products for ON Semiconductor.

ON Semiconductor demoed the KNX TP evaluation board and reference design this week in Frankfurt, Germany, at the Light+Building 2012 show. The board and reference design features NXP's low-power Cortex-M0 microcontroller and ON Semiconductor's soon to be launched NCN5120 receiver-transmitter IC.

The first evaluation boards will be available with the NXP LPC1227 microcontroller. Based on the very energy-efficient ARM Cortex-M0 processor, NXP's LPC1100 and LPC1200 microcontrollers provide solutions for home and building automation products. The LPC1100 and LPC1200 series include up to 128 KB Flash and 8 KB SRAM, and offer configurable peripherals suited for energy-efficient controls and KNX nodes.

Because of their low power consumption, these devices can be powered directly from the DC-DC converter of the NCN5120, making bus-powered devices easy to implement. With performance levels up to 45 DMIPS, a single NXP Cortex-M0 microcontroller delivers the resources required to run a KNX stack, with enough bandwidth available for the end application. A certified implementation of the KNX System B is available for the LPC1200 at Weinzierl Engineering (http://www.weinzierl.de).

ON Semiconductor's NCN5120 receiver-transmitter IC is suitable for use in KNX twisted pair networks (KNX TP1-256). It supports the connection of actuators, sensors, microcontrollers, switches or other applications in a building network. The NCN5120 will be the first product in a family of KNX transceivers designed to handle the transmission and reception of data on the bus.

Featuring built-in mixed-signal technology, the NCN5120 integrates the analog front end, digital processing capability and power supply features in a monolithic integrated circuit. It provides a 20 volt (V) regulator and two high efficient DC-DC converters generating a fixed 3.3 V and an adjustable 3.3 V to 21 V regulated voltage from the bus with 100 milliamp (mA) drive capability each. This transceiver is suited for high power applications and has been designed to reduce the bill of materials while still supporting safe and reliable coupling to the bus thanks to features such as selectable fan-in mode, bus voltage and temperature monitoring.

Device samples of the NCN5120 are available upon request. KNX certification of the device is in the final phases. Full production of the device is expected to start during the third quarter of 2012. To request samples or for additional technical information, visit http://http://www.onsemi.com.

For additional technical information on NXP Cortex-M0 microcontrollers, visit http://http://www.nxp.com/microcontrollers.

This article originally appeared on EE Times Europe.