Mini PCI Express (mPCIe) Digital I/O Cards For Compact Control And Monitoring Applications

ACCES I/O Products announced the release of a family of mini PCI Express (mPCIe) digital I/O cards, the mPCIe-DIO Family with Digital Integration Features. These PCI Express Mini cards feature a selection of digital I/O functions for compact control and monitoring applications. Choose up to 24 channels offering various voltage, isolation, speed, and counter/timer options and can integrate additional I/O functions in systems without board modifications or customization. This \ design provides system integrators numerous off-the-shelf I/O configurations for new and existing embedded systems.

All ACCES mPCIe cards offer latching connectors for shock and vibration mitigation as well as an operating temperature of -40°C to +85°C. The cards have been designed for use in environments such as military and defense along with applications such as health and medical, point of sale systems, kiosk design, retail, hospitality, automation, gaming and more. The size (50.95mm x 30mm) allows for performance in applications where space is a valuable resource.

The Digital Integration line of cards encompasses a wide variety of digital I/O types, including:

• 24 channels of 3.3V LVTTL (optional 5V TTL) high-current digital I/O
• 4, 8, or 16-channel optically-isolated inputs at up to 31VDC or VAC RMS
• 4 or 8-channel solid state (FET) or electromechanical relays
• 4 or 8-channel 32-bit counters supporting both pulse and quadrature signals

All the cards share features such as memory mapped registers for low-latency operation. Output channels support pulse/train / PWM / frequency / and quadrature generation. Input channels support quadrature encoders, flexible measurement of pulse duration, frequency, and event counting, with optional debouncing, IRQ generation, and more.

The mPCIe-COM-4SM family of cards feature high performance 16C950-class UARTs. Available in 4-port and 2-port versions, each port is capable of communication speeds up to 921.6kbps in RS-232 (differential modes support speeds as high as 3Mbps) and has 128-byte deep transmit and receive FIFOs. Large FIFOs protect against data loss in multitasking operating systems, reduce CPU utilization, and improve data throughput, while reducing or eliminating inter-character or inter-packet pauses. The advanced integrated circuit with pre-scalar supports a wide variety of custom baud rates, and any rates not otherwise achievable can be supported via a custom factory-installed crystal oscillator (up to 16Mbps!).

RS-232, RS-422, or RS-485 can be software selected, per port, and the selection is stored in non-volatile memory for future use. If you don’t need that much flexibility you can order versions with only RS422/485 or even pure RS232. The RS232 ports provided by the card are 100% compatible with every other industry-standard serial COM device, supporting TX, RX, RTS, and CTS. RS422 mode uses the same transceivers as the RS-485 specification, allowing perfect 4-wire RS-422 and RS-485 compatibility – and the device supports RS-485 4-wire.

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