Gauging interest: UI card for OMAP-L137/C6747/5/3 EVM

Hi everyone,

This is just a friendly reminder to anyone potentially interested in obtaining this daughter card. Please vote above based on your interest in this card.

I would definitely buy one.  I would also be interested in Eagle CAD foot prints for the daughter card connectors on the EVM.  Best case would have all the daughter board connectors in one foot print in the correct orientations. 

Thanks

Dan

Daniel,

Thank you for the feedback. Would you mind voting in the poll above?

Hi Tim,

I think it would be very intereresting to have also a "system on a chip" card with the L138/L137 on it (at a price arount 150 USD). Like the control cards on the F28x series.

Any plans?

Regards,

Cristian

Christian,

I know this response is a bit late, but take a look at this post just announced yesterday: http://e2e.ti.com/forums/t/7327.aspx

Hi Tim,

 I have been asking around for some time now about this UI board, people at spectrum told me I could only buy the whole DA-830 kit thru the ti store (I have already purchased the OMAPL-137 kit) . I´m developing a portable Data Logging and analisys device so I would definitevely buy the User Interface Board, but I have no need for the DA-830 audio board so the whole kit wouldn´t be the solution for my needs. I certainly hope that TI makes it available separately.

The UI board idea sounds like a good one, though I'm not presently in the market for L137 tools, but I am keeping my eye on the L138 and stellaris parts.

It seems like it might be a decent idea for TI to come out with a series of modular periphal cards / units which could potentially be used with various of its DSP / Application processor / media processor / MCU devices.  LCD screens in text mode.  LCD dot matrix graphic screens.  Keypads.  Memory storage expansion cards with CF / SD sockets.  Ethernet interfaces.  USB interface hardware.  ADC/DAC units.  IGBT/Mosfet H-bridge drivers.  Terminal blocks for external connections.  Optical/capacitive isolators.  ESD protection arrays. etc.  One could end up with a sort of modular EVM kit with a base board and then various peripherals that could suit the interfaces available on a particular processor chip.

The generic low performance peripherals could be interfaced by SPI, I2C, McBSP, SCI, CAN/RS232, etc.

The higher performance peripherals could interface to the appropriate dedicated ports or to general purpose parallel bus interfaces, et. al.

I also echo Cristian Bogus' sentiment that I would be interested in seeing something like a "Control Card" type of system-on-module unit developed for the DSP / DaVinci media processor / OMAP / Stellaris types of devices in the tradition of the C2000 MCU control cards, but with more pins and good signal integrity for higher performance interfaces that would be applicable to the DSP parts.  This kind of module could fit well into a modular framework of processor cards, UI cards, peripheral cards, et. al. as I suggest above.

It would certainly save a lot of time in CAD / PCB layout for people wanting to quickly prototype systems that are more customized than the standard EVMs so more evaluation and software development work could be done more quickly based upon the common types of the reference designs and evaluation modules rather than having to reimplement everything (UI boards, power supply regulators, JTAG interfaces, memory interfaces, ....) from scratch.   A lot of times I'd like to buy evaluation modules but I end up having I/O interface needs that are just a bit too customized to be effectively handled by the standard EVM boards, so by the time I'd make a custom PCB to interface my necessary peripherals to the EVM board, I might as well have just done a fully custom design.  More flexible / modular / numerous I/O interface ports and a set of modular EVM daughterboards that could connect to those would solve the problem allowing initial in-house development of much fewer custom peripheral boards during the product development / evaluation process by allowing the use of the vendor-sold modular peripheral modules ala carte as needed for a particular prototype.

I'd have just as much interest / need for a good UI board / keypad whether I was developing with a C2000, an OMAP, a DaVinci, a MSP430, a ChipCon SOC, or a Stellaris. Often a SPI/I2C interfaced character or dot matrix mode LCD unit would do, and otherwise an 8-bit MCU bus interface parallel driven graphic unit would be fine.  Obviously for parts having a built in LCD / LVDS / row-column segment controller like some of the MSP430s/OMAPs/Davinci's I'd just want the normal type/size/resolution of what the chip's controller is designed to work with.  But for the majority of other TI processors, it seems like a generic SPI / SCI interfaced unit would be fine for most development needs, and it would be nice not to have to design it oneself if a development unit or modular reference design was available.  It seems like it could be a good way to show off various TI parts too in such a line of modular peripheral reference designs -- a C2000 based RS232/CAN to parallel uC port graphic LCD board.  A MSP430 based capacitive keypad with a SPI / RS-232 interface.  A CC2530 based SPI-to-RF-modem module.  A Stellaris based SPI / CAN / I2C / RS-232 to ethernet module etc. etc.

Hi Tim,

  Do you have any update on the DA-830 user interface board?

Hi Haroldo,

Sorry, I do not have any updates on the availability of this card. As you can see there wasn't a whole lot of interest in this card, so I guess that had an impact on its availability.

Hi Tim,

 The UI board has been released by spectrum digital this week:

here is the link:

http://www.spectrumdigital.com/product_info.php?&products_id=234