Re: need L290 substitute


How fast do the bits change? Can you do it in software
with a PIC/AVR/8051? ...

Way to go.

Seems likely! At a trade show yesterday I picked up a sample of a
Silicon Labs 336D development "stick". The daughter board's micro is a
QFN20 device with an 8051-compatible core, 16 kB of flash code space,
768 bytes of RAM, a ten-bit 200 ksps 16-channel AC, and a single
10-bit current-output DAC, runs at up to 25 MIPS using its onboard
oscillator or at lower speeds (onboard or RC or crystal).

Writing a lookup-table-based quadrature-to-value loop with a DAC
output would be easy and fast. Cost for the bare chips from Mouser is
$4.31 in onesies, under $3 in hundreds.

I'm sure that similar capabilities are available in other micro
families (e.g. PIC, TI MSP340, etc.). If you can accept a coarser DAC
output (e.g. a low-pass-filtered PWM or PDM output) then even a pretty
tiny jellybean PIC or AVR could do the job.

--
Dave Platt <dplatt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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