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Super Mini-Node Interface Card (SMINI) - Part 1

by Marisa Huot (2024-05-25)


One of these port select lines connects directly to the enable (EN) inputs for each of the port I/O buffer functions. Designed to be used with the SenseCAP Sensor Hub, this splitter is able to "split" one MODBUS RS485 port into 4. The RS485 splitter has one male interface that connects to the Sensor Hub and four female interfaces that link to the sensors. There is a whole plethora of SenseCAP industrial-grade sensors, and this is just one of the many! This is great for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems where there are many devices and it also comes at a very low cost to implement. Devices utilizing RS485 can communicate with central control systems using communication protocols such as Modbus and ASCII. Grove sensors to MODBUS RS485 industrial-grade sensors. You can easily enjoy the advantages such as low power consumption and long transmission range, without affording the cost of changing the sensors you are using. These advantages compared to other alternatives made RS485 popular and used in a widespread amount of instances. The picture shows the magnetic field lines and the noise current in the RS485 data lines that is the result of that magnetic field. 125 mV. The small voltage gradient is intended to improve noise immunity of the idle bus, as 200 mV differential is the sensitivity treshold of the bus receivers (upper toggling point of their built-in hysteresis).


The twisted pairs in RS485 give immunity against electrical noise, making RS485 viable in electrically noisy environments. RS485 has many advantages over other standards, especially when it comes to applications in noisy industrial environments. RS485 enables binary signal transmission through generated high and low voltages representing binary 0s and 1s (on and off), allowing for efficient long-distance communication in electronically noisy environments. Transmission lines should always be properly terminated, with short stubs, to prevent signal reflections. By adding another 2 wires, making it a 4 wires system, it allows data transmission in both directions to and fro devices at the same time, also known as full-duplex. In this system, the master polls each slave waits for the response, and then polls the next slave. Other reasons that some RS-232 ports were half-duplex: some very old UARTs may be half-duplex limiting the system, and some very old computers drove the RS-232 drivers directly from the processor without a UART. RS485 at its core with 2 wires allows half-duplex data transmission.


In this setup both the TX and RX share a single pair of wires, therefore it is limited to half-duplex data transmission as the data cannot be transmitted simultaneously to and fro each device. This means data can be transmitted in both directions to and fro devices one direction at a time. Devices will be linked together via a bus configuration as shown in the picture above. However, if you’re looking to experiment, the latter will provide you with more versatility. If you’re very sure that you are only using RS485 then you will not be disappointed with the former. RS485 main advantages as compared to other serial communication are tolerance to electrical noise, lengthy cable runs, multiple slaves in one connection, and fast data transmission speed. RS485 is made for serial communication with high speeds, support for long distances, and support for multiple devices (slaves). The design of RS485 is targeted towards it being tolerant and forgiving to noise and long cable runs with the twisted pair cable arrangement.


In the picture above, noise is generated by magnetic fields from the environment. Up to 32 slaves can be connected in the system. However, in a full-duplex setup, they are limited to a master and slave communication where slaves cannot communicate with each other. 5V from the master device (rather than set up a separate power supply). The master requests the concentration of the slave, the slave transmits the concentration. Another major advantage is that there can be more than one slave in the connection. Many connectors and pin assignments exist, but there is no standard. The LocalTalk network uses RS-485-compatible differential signaling on standard 4-wire RJ11 telephone connectors and cable. Biasing has a number of uses on a RS-485 network, but first lets look at what RS422 and RS-485 have to say. Stub length, termination, and biasing resistors can have a significant impact on the performance of the network. If CAT-5 (100 Ω cable) cable is used, the termination resistors should be 100 Ω.



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