help on finding cheap ethernet controller/board

How much is "cheap"? I personally favor the Luminary 3S6965 evaluation board, because it is more or less turnkey, includes a USB debug interface on-board, and has a lot of generally useful stuff on it. It costs US$69.95; probably more overseas.

Olimex has a very wide variety of products too, but I haven't used any of their Ethernet-capable boards. Many people in this NG use Olimex products, myself included.

here is a wide variety to check out:

Cheers Don...

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Parallax Propeller Powered .96" OLED module
http://tinyurl.com/2vr2gr

For a one-off project, a Lantronix XPort may be a simpler way to go, although it will still take some development time to integrate it into your app.

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Get a copy of Circuit Cellar Ink magazine

You'll find tons of articles and ads for just what you're looking for.

good luck. George

You might like to take a look at the Luminary Micro eval kits for Ethernet:

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Cheap is relative. You could use a full blown small formfactor PC if you're familiar with that environment. You could get a pico-itx (10x7cm) motherboard or a cheaper mini-itx (17x17cm) motherboard with an embedded ethernet cotroller. Or you could get a microcontroller development kit like the Freescale M52233DEMO.

Petter

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Woah, thanks for your replies!

Here are some additional specifics on the project so that you ca understand it more:

-I will be using an energy metering IC (ADE7752A,Analog Devices), thi will output a signal with frequency proportional to the energy measured This is the only input to my microcontroller.

-The microcontroller should display output on an LCD and also send th values measured to the ethernet board.

-I plan on using a Z8 Encore! microcontroller since it is readil available here in the Philippines (unlike Microchip-PIC which don't sel products here.)

Some of the online embedded ethernet boards I am taking a look at are:

1) The Ethernet "MINI" by Fred Eady $69 (By the way, he also posts articles on circuitcellar) 2) Spartan2E FPGA boards -I have used them in my university, I have knowledge on VHDL although don't know if the board has the necessary TCP/IP drivers suite that I nee to be able to send messages on the network. (I don't have the time to cod the necessary TCP/IP related software.) 3) Olimex ENC28J60 ETHERNET CONTROLLER DEVELOPMENT BOARD (dontronics.com)

Can any of these be driven by the z8? or do I have to change m microController to use them? Please share your ideas on this one guys. Thanks again!

Might as well blow our trumpet again...

It may not be the cheapest hardware combination but our standard controller product includes a TCP/IP stack and has a built in programming language both of which will cut your programming time dramatically.

Have you considered how your PC will receive the data? We support several ways of transferring data where you won't have to write any PC code at all. (http server, ftp, email)

Anahata snipped-for-privacy@microrobotics.co.uk

maybe rabbitsemiconductor.com be at help. Its not cheap but simple and easy.

ali

Regards, Murray R. Van Luyn

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