General Introduction - DEUTSCHMANN AUTOMATION UNIGATE IC2 - Fast Ethernet Instruction Manual

Deutschmann Automation GmbH & Co. KG

General introduction

1 General introduction
In the past the integration of a fieldbus connection required an enormous effort from the progress
engineers. On account of the large variety of communication systems it is not enough to compile
the right combination of communication hardware; due to their standards and fundamentals dif-
ferent busses also require the corresponding skills of the engineers.
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This does not apply in case of the UNIGATE IC2 by Deutschmann Automation any more. All
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digital functions, software, stack and driver as well as optocoupler are integrated on a UNIGATE
IC2 in correspondence with the standard. In addition to the reduction of the required size, also
different fieldbuses can easily be integrated.
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Through the flexible firmware of UNIGATE IC2 no software-changes are required on the
side of the customer!
Since 1997 Deutschmann Automation has experience in the field of fieldbus gateways; this
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enormous experience results in the UNIGATE IC as a consistent sequel of this successful
product line.
Terminology
In the entire document and in all parts of the software that is to be used, the terms Input and Out-
put are used. Input and Output are ambiguous, always depending on the viewpoint. We see the
fieldbus as central interface and as integral component of your device; therefore in all places it is
always referred to data from the viewpoint of the Slave, that is Input data, as data from the Mas-
ter to the Slave - regardless of the used bus.
Representation of numbers
Numbers in decimal format are always represented without prefix and without suffix as well.
Hexadecimal numbers are always marked with the prefix 0x.
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The UNIGATE IC2 is a further development of the 1st series of the UNIGATE IC. Equipped
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with a Cortex-M4 controller, the UNIGATE IC2 achieves much higher transfer rates when com-
municating via SPI or UART. In addition, the scripting processing time (depending on the com-
mands used) is reduced by a factor of about 50 - 80. Thus, script execution times in the
microsecond range are possible. Execution time of a script line is about 10 µs.
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The UNIGATE IC2 is also PIN-compatible with the 1st series of the UNIGATE IC.
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3.4.20 Instruction manual UNIGATE IC2 - Fast Ethernet V. 1.2 10