18
dc2518af
DEMO MANUAL DC2518A
Multiple demo boards that have the 14-pin cascading con-
nectors can be combined to control as many eight boards.
Demo boards that can be cascaded include the DC2518,
DC1962, DC2022, DC2023, DC2028, and DC2198. The
number of boards is limited by an I/O expander chip that
has three address pins, allowing 8 different combinations.
This setup demonstrates the coordinated fault responses
and accurate time base shared across multiple power
system managers.
Procedure:
1. Stack the boards side-by-side by plugging JP1 of one
board into JP2 of another DC2518A board.
2. Ensure different slave address settings for each of the
boards. The address of each DC2518A board is set by
the DIP switch JP3 on the backside of the board. The
setting must be unique for each board in the array.
3. Plug in the +12V V
IN
power into one of the boards
as shown in Figure 22. Only one +12V power source
is allowed.
SETUP PROCEDURE FOR MULTI-BOARD ARRAYS
4. The USB-to-I
2
C/SMBus/PMBus Controller may be
plugged into any board. If no demo boards show up in
the GUI, click the magnifying glass icon to enumerate
the I
2
C bus and find the addresses of the parts. Repeat
steps #2-4 to ensure that each board has a unique DIP
switch setting.
5. Since the individual CONTROL lines are connected
across the boards (CTRL is a common signal across
all boards in the array), make sure that all CONTROL
switches are set to the RUN position.
6. Re-launch LTpowerPlay. After launching, LTpowerPlay
will enumerate the entire board array and build a rep-
resentative system tree and read all hardware settings
into the GUI.
ATTENTION:
Once the GUI has launched, click the
“RAM
→
NVM” button in the toolbar to ensure that
the slave addresses are retained after a power
off or reset. Otherwise, you may lose communication with
the slaves after a power cycle or reset event.
Figure 22. Array of Multiple Board Sets
