10M PC to microcontroller cabled connection

[x3.exe]

Dear all,

Does anyone know how to interface uC to PC over 10m distance, with data rates up to 1Mbitps?

looking forward to your replies.

 

[sebmaster]

Might be a little overkill but LVDS would work.

See this for speed vs. distance: **broken link removed** - youd be looking at anywhere between 500-600Mbps.

You can buy really simple driver/reciever chips that would be good for serial connections.

 

[x3.exe]

Forgot to mention that data is output from uC through UART. As far as I know, for RS232 cables, length of the cable should be very short in order to operate at 1Mbps. For USB, maximum cable length is 5m. However, I have read that there are some USB active extension cables, which have built-in repeaters or something. However, I am not sure whether it will provide a reliable communication link between computer and microcontroller. Does anyone have any experience in using USB extension cables with microcontrollers?

 

[sebmaster]

Hi x3.exe,

Sorry I can't tell you much about USB repeaters, but acctually when I mentioned LVDS I was thinking of a serial connection like you mentioned.

Now I have never done this but I am *pretty sure* you could use a couple of these to 'jump' the 10m gap between your uC and your PC: **broken link removed**

I would think it would be a simple matter of providing them power then just connecting the appropirate Tx/Rx of your serial ports to the inputs/outputs and running some cheap twisted pair inbetween.

Those chips are about £2 each, so it might be a fair bit cheaper than using USB.

Good luck anyway with whatever you go with!

 

[ChrisC]

What about RS485? You can get RS232 to RS485 converters which will handle 1Mbit/sec (e.g. Amplicon 485HF9) which plug directly into an existing serial port, or you can get the bare RS485 transceivers (e.g. Maxim MAX3080 family) for integrating onto your own PCB.