This project was the master device for the lens controller project. This device communicates with the host computer using a single channel FTDI USB to RS-232 chip. The microcontroller exposes an ASCII configuration and control interface. The I2C controller provides two independent channels that can each control up to 16 lens controllers. The channels have configurable trigger rates. Each time that a trigger command is sent to lens controller(s) an event marker can be triggered on a connected GPS receiver. The frequency of the event markers are also a user configurable parameter. The event markers can be triggered with every frame, every other frame, every 5th or 10th frame. Additionally the event markers can be set to only trigger when at least one second has elapsed since the last marker was triggered. These event markers allow for the correlation between a frame’s trigger time and a universal clock (GPS/UTC) regardless of the precision of the PC real-time clock. This provides for event accuracies as high as 1 microsecond resolution. Below are a few images of the circuit board.
I2C Controller (Top)
I2C Controller (Bottom)