FLEX is an embedded board which can be used by all the developers who want to fully exploit the potential of the latest Microchip micro-controllers: the dsPIC® DSC family.
FLEX is born as a development board where to easily develop and test real-time applications for the Microchip dsPIC® DSC micro-controller. The main features of FLEX are:
* robust electronic design;
* modular architecture;
* availability of a growing number of application notes;
* the full support of the Erika Enterprise real-time kernel from Evidence Srl.
The compact and essential design allows the employment of FLEX not only for development purposes, but they make the FLEX platform a suitable solution for the direct deployment into the working environment.
The FLEX platform is the result of the synergetic effort of two italian companies working in the field of embedded systems: Evidence Srl and Embedded Solutions. The two companies combined their skills, respectively on real-time systems and electronic boards development, to create this complete, easy-to-use, compact solution for creating complex applications based on the Microchip dsPIC® DSC micro-controller.

2 Architecture
The modular architecture provided by FLEX allows to compound a number of boards to integrate different features into a single device. The basic configuration of a FLEX device is made by the Base Board only. The FLEX Base Board mounts a Microchip dsPIC(R)DSC micro controller, and exports almost all the pins of the micro controller. The user can easily connect the desired components to the dsPIC(R)DSC ports in order to build the specific application. As depicted in Figure 3.1,several daughter boards can be connected in piggyback to the FLEX Base Board. The daughter boards have different features and they can be easily combined to obtain complex devices. Evidence S.r.l.and Embedded Solutions S.r.l. supplies a growing number of daughter boards for basic and advanced applications.

2.1 Base Board
The FLEX Base Board
The FLEX Base Board is designed to export all the connections of a standard Microchip dsPIC (R) DSC micro-controller. The board connections use the standard 2.54 mm pitch: this feature make it easy the usage of custom, home-made daughter boards.
The board have two options for using onboard dsPIC (R) DSC micro-controllers: dsPIC (R) DSC controller welded on the board surface, and a socket for installing the micro-controller through the interchangeable Plug-In Modules (PIMs) available from Microchip. The availability of the latter option allows the developer to forget any limit on the number of programming cycles during the implementation/test/debugging phases: a new PIM can be installed on the socket in case of any problem to the older one. The FLEX Base Board is available in two versions:
Full version, showed here.
Light version, showed here:
The connectors are fully compatible between Full and Light Versions, so that an application developed with the Full Version can be easily moved to the Light Version and vice-versa, i.e., without any modification to the control program.

2.1.1 Base Board: Full version

The Full FLEX Base Board, integrates an extra-robust power supply circuitry, which allows the usage of a wide range of power suppliers. It accepts voltage ranges between 9-36V. The power supply signal is filtered and adapted to the internal levels.

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2.1.2 Base Board: Light Version

The Light FLEX Base Board has been designed to be as possible. The Light Versions uses a simplified power supply circuitry, and thus requires a more careful power supply than the Full Version. Moreover, there is no integrated USB programming capability. Example soft target applications for the Light FLEX Base Board are: distributed, battery-powered applications, like sensor networks; small robotic applications,i.e., for mobile robot control and sensor acquisition.

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See Flex - Daughter Boards