Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??

On a sunny day (Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:47:38 -0700) it happened
"terry@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <terry@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<1183600058.715287.87230@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

I need to build devices for a Marine application that will receive
multiple (4 or 8) serial signals. Typically the signals are 4800 baud,
N,8,1 with a burst length of up to 80 characters, and a repetition
rate of 1 to 2 per second. (These are NMEA signals). They are
uncoordinated signals from individual devices such as GPS receivers,
Engine monitoring instruments etc...

I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive -
only would be OK here). I want to interface such a chip or chips to a
PIC which will do a small amount of supervision, possibly filtering,
and use it's main hardware UART or USB or a CAN controller to output
data to a computer.

I've searched thru MicroChip and some on Google etc. What I'd LIKE is
a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI,
serial, I2C etc. AND which has 4 to 8 serial ports.

Anyone seen such a beastie?? Any other suggestions other than many
single-channel USARTs (Ughh..)

Thanks!

It is actually quite simple to implement a serial port in software.
Depending on processor speed, you can poll status for one or many
status bits... use interrupts if you must.. PIC could do it.
One fast PIC is all you need.

If one wanted _many_ serial ports, fast hardware, and separate processing,
filtering, and lots of IO to do something, then a small FPGA can be useful.
You can easily fit >100 serial ports in a low cost FPGA, and perhaps
if you actually needed a processor just use some core (free of buy IP).

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??
    ... Typically the signals are 4800 baud, ... I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive - ... a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI, ... I've used multi-port UARTs from NXP before. ...
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  • Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??
    ... Typically the signals are 4800 baud, ... I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive - ... a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI, ... You can do it in software reasonably easily - 4800 baud is not especially taxing - you just need to ...
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  • Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??
    ... Typically the signals are 4800 baud, ... I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive - ... a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI, ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??
    ... Typically the signals are 4800 baud, ... I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive - ... a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI, ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??
    ... Typically the signals are 4800 baud, ... I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive - ... a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI, ...
    (sci.electronics.design)