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ARM MCU maker moves up to modules

Networked display and serial-to-Ethernet modules speed designs to production

Luminary Micro has added to its range of Stellaris ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers (MCUs), with communications modules and reference design kits for Ethernet-enabled display applications and serial-to-Ethernet communications applications, all based on the Stellaris microcontrollers. The networked Intelligent Display Module (MDL-IDM) is a graphical touch-screen user interface for control, automation, and instrumentation applications. It uses a 2.8-in QVGA 16-bit colour LCD resistive touch panel display and has Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). You can use it to build intelligent terminals that connect and obtain their power via a single CAT5 Ethernet cable. Alternatively, you can power from 24 or 5V DC. You can also configure the module as a touch display panel in an embedded control device. It uses the LM3S6918 MCU with 256 kbytes of single-cycle flash memory and 64 kbytes of single-cycle SRAM, with 128 kbytes of display memory, an SD Card interface, an audio transducer, a relay output, and four analogue measurement inputs. It comes with a library of graphics functions and peripheral drivers, and complete board support package.
Similarly, Luminary configured the Serial-to-Ethernet module (MDL-S2E) as ready-to-use means of adding add web connectivity to any serial device. The most common application for the MDL-S2E is for augmenting legacy products that only contain a serial port for a configuration or control interface. Preprogrammed software included in the module supports IP configuration with static IP address or DHCP; a Telnet server for access to serial port; a web server for module configuration; UDP responder for device discovery; a Telnet client for Ethernet-based serial port extender; and SSH server for secure communications.