Eval-ADICUP360

Analog Device's EVAL-ADICUP360

What is going on with Analog Devices (ADI) and their EVAL-ADICUP360? Isn’t ADI the big amplifier and converter company? What are they doing with an Arduino compatible evaluation board, several daughter boards, and reference designs all geared for the makerspace? Well, let me tell you. This is not your grandfather’s ADI. The EVAL-ADICUP360 is an exciting new Arduino compatible platform that features their ADuCM360 ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller and combines it with the power, strength and knowledge of ADI with dual 24-bit sigma-delta converters.

Each EVAL-ADICUP360 comes with an ADICUP360 base board, pin mapping diagram, micro USB cable and a “Getting Started” card. The base board has a pin compatible Arduino Uno footprint with two PMOD connectors. Peripherals on the board include SPI, I²C, UART and GPIO, as well as two USB connectors, one for UART to USB serial monitor and a debug USB for programming and debugging, or as a UART to USB serial monitor. This system uses the free Eclipse IDE software environment for either Linux or Windows. One of ADI’s top engineers, Brandon Bushey, has a great getting started video showcasing this board.

Analog Device's EVAL-CN0216-ARDZ

Having met Brandon a few times at their offices in Boston, I am impressed with his can-do attitude to go beyond ADI’s traditional comfort zone to create something very new and exciting. I was fortunate enough to see this board up close and personal, and was further impressed with the demonstrations that he shared. A very detailed user’s guide can be found on ADI’s Wiki page. The main selling point of this board is its power and versatility with the numerous PMOD and Arduino Shield compatible daughter boards. The various daughter boards allow you to maximize the power of ADI’s converter expertise with dual 24-bit sigma-delta converters.

Let’s take a look at one of the daughter boards, the EVAL-CN0216-ARDZ. This board is a precision weigh scale signal conditioning system featuring the AD7791 24-bit sigma-delta ADC, as well as two external ADA4528-1 amplifiers. The first thing I noticed was how physically small it really was (see above). All of the daughter boards have very detailed pages to help you get up and running quickly. For this board you can use either a 4-wire or 6-wire sensor by simply moving some jumpers around on the pins. Easy-Peasy.

Should you want to change the pin mapping on the AD7791 chip, that too is done by simply moving some jumpers around.

Brandon did a video on this board as well.  

Other daughter boards for the EVAL-ADICUP360 include:

• The EVAL-CN0357-ARDZ, an electrochemical gas detection system
• The EVAL-CN0336-PMDZ, a 300 kSPS PMOD data acquisition system
• The EVAL-ADXL362-ARDZ, an Arduino compatible shield that is an ultra-low power accelerometer with display
• The EVAL-CN0326-PMDZ, a pH sensor with temperature compensation solution
• The EVAL-CN0337-PMDZ, a 12-bit, 300 kSPS, fully isolated RTD temperature measurement solution

For more information on the EVL-ADICUP360, check out this video from DigiKey. ADI’s EVAL-ADICUP360 is a great choice for the makerspace that features the power of the ARM Cortex, dual 24-bit converters, and an Arduino compatible platform for maximum power, versatility and ease of use. With numerous daughter boards to choose from, you can’t go wrong with this platform from ADI.