DLN-2 USB-I2C/SPI/GPIO Adapter

Key Features

• USB-I2C interface with configurable frequency from 1kHz to 1MHz, wide supply voltage range (2.3V to 5V), multimaster and clock stretching support;
• USB-SPI interface with configurable frequency (up to 4MHz), phase and polarity;
• 32 digital I/O pins with embedded pull-up resistors;
• 8 10-bit analog inputs (ADC);
• 2 PWM outputs;
• 2 32-bit pulse & frequency counters;
• event-driven interface for digital inputs, analog inputs and pulse counters
• 1 status LED and 2 user-configurable LED's;
• no hidden fees: API, updates, software and technical support are free;
• USB 2.0 full-speed (12 MHz) connection to personal computer;
• backward compatible with our well known U2C-12 USB-I2C/SPI/GPIO Interface Adapter;
• RoHS Compliant

General Description

DLN-2 USB-I2C/SPI/GPIO/PWM/ADC adapter is an ideal solution for interfacing your hardware from Windows, Linux or Mac OS X based computer.

The DLN-2 adapter allows you to send and receive data to/from I2C and SPI slave devices at high frequencies, control your hardware using PDM interface and digital outputs and monitor it with digital and analog inputs and pulse counters.

There are a lot of open source examples and ready to use programs that you can download for free from dlnware.com web site. There you can also find comprehensive documentation and examples that show how to interface the DLN-2 adapter from different programming languages.

The DLN-2 interface is available in two modifications:

• the assembled PCB board that you can connect to your hardware with the Diolan accessories;
• the preprogrammed microcontroller (system-on-chip) that you can embed into your hardware.

Event-Driven Interface

One of the most exciting features of DLN-2 USB-I2C/SPI/GPIO/PDW/ADC adapter is an event-driven interface.

You can configure the DLN-2 adapter to notify your application when a specific event occurs. Let’s see that on example. Here is an example.

Let us assume that your application controls a voltage level at some circuit. If the voltage level exceeds 1.6V, it notifies a user about that.

The competitive adapters leave you with the only option to continuously poll the analog input for current value, unreasonably wasting computer resources and USB bandwidth.

The ADC module of the DLN-2 adapter can notify your application when the voltage level exceeds a preconfigured threshold. Your application can set the upper threshold value to 1.6V and continue its regular operation. When the predefined condition occurs, your application will receive an event and notify a user.

The event-driven interface is available for digital inputs, analog inputs and pulse counters.

U2C-12 USB-I2C/SPI/GPIO interface adapter compatibility

Before we developed the DLN-series adapters, we had a U2C-12 USB-I2C adapter that was used by thousands of our customers. After U2C-12 adapter was discontinued, we replaced it with the DLN-2 adapter, which has exactly the same form factor.

The DLN-2 adapter has more extended functionality in comparison with U2C-12 adapter. It supports additional interfaces and higher frequencies. These improvements required from us to change API.

Some of our customers didn’t want to adapt their software to our new API. We put our customers at the center of all we do and we have developed the firmware for DLN-2 USB-I2C adapter that is fully compatible with the previous U2C-12 API. These adapters are available for purchase under part number DLN-2-U2C. For additional details refer to the U2C-12 compatibility article.