[Elecraft] k-pod data cable

[Wes Stewart]

Bill,

I dunno.  I'm an RF guy and this uProcessor stuff makes my eyes glaze over.

That said, your own reference says in part: "short-distance, intra-board 
communication." It seems to me that the problems seen are related to 
interconnections between the K3 and the K-Pod. And it seems the longer, the worser.

As I understand it, and I could very well be totally wrong, a couple of 
micro-controller pins are brought out to an unshielded connector without any 
buffering or filtering.  From that point the environment is anyone's guess.  The 
only reason that there isn't one of Jim Brown's Pin 1 problems, is pin 1 isn't 
used :-)

Wes  N7WS


On 1/16/2017 8:08 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:
> It is likely that the interface used by the K-Pod is the I2C bus 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C>, a very commonly used bus in the chip 
> world. I use it to connect the real-time clock board to my BeagleBone Black 
> board.
>
> I2C is a 2 way, multi-master bus protocol that might be ideal for tying the 
> ever-growing collection of Elecraft devices.
>
> We would really like to send commands from whatever device we're using, 
> whether it is the controls of the K3, a keyboard attached to a P3, the panel 
> of a KPA500, or the K-Pod. While USB could support this kind of network, I2C 
> is much simpler and cheaper. RS232, as a point to point protocol, really 
> shouldn't be considered.
>
> 73 Bill AE6JV