LAN9254 EtherCAT® Device Evaluation Kit with 32 Digital I/Os

The LAN9254 EtherCAT® Device Evaluation Kit with 32 Digital I/Os can be used to develop an EtherCAT slave controller in DGIO mode without a microcontroller. An attached ESI EEPROM can be used to configure the board’s features and capabilities.

A third physical interface can be added to explore how to use the LAN9254 controller as a three-port EtherCAT coupler.

The LAN9254 is a 2-/3-port EtherCAT slave controller with dual integrated Ethernet PHYs supporting full-duplex 100BASE-TX operation. The device can be used to design cost-effective, multi-segment EtherCAT device solutions. It supports HP Auto-MDIX, allowing the use of direct connect or cross-over LAN cables. The LAN9254 also provides up to 32 I/Os and EtherCAT RUN and EtherCAT ERROR signals. Multiple LAN9254 devices can be daisy chained and share a common clock regenerated at each instance to provide scalable I/O arrays.

The LAN9254 has 8 KB of Dual-Port memory (DPRAM) and eight Fieldbus Memory Management Units (FMMUs). Each FMMU performs the task of mapping logical addresses to physical addresses. It includes eight SyncManagers to allow the exchange of data between the EtherCAT master and the local application. It also supports Distributed Clock operation for high-accuracy time precision. Its integrated 3.3V to1.2V linear regulator enables it to operate via a single 3.3V power supply. The internal linear regulator may also be disabled, allowing usage of high efficiency external 1.2V regulators for lower system power dissipation.

The LAN9254 is available in commercial, industrial, and extended industrial temperature ranges and is offered in an 80-pin TQFP package.