Chips

[Steve=Ravet%Prj=Eng%PCPD=Hou at bangate.compaq.com]

jws at mlb.semi.harris.com (James W. Swonger) Wrote:
|  I had an interesting conversation today with a couple of guys from our
| Automotive design group. They were down for an "Engineering Excellence
| Workshop" and were running a demo of an integrated knock sensor signal
| processor. This thing (HIP9010) is controlled by a microprocessor bus
| port, and does programmable gain, filtering, windowing and integration.
| It produces an analog output voltage for knock amplitude. 

This sounds like a great part for diy_efi.  Is it in a knock sensor form 
factor, or does it require a knock sensor and other stuff in front?  And does 
it work with the J1850 single wire bus you mentioned below?

|  They also had an eval board for the J1850 single wire automotive bus
| interface products. 

I read about this in EDN products edition.  It sounds very interesting.  for 
those of you who don't know, this is sort of an ethernet for cars.  Rather 
than run a 40 pin ribbon cable carrying address/data info in parallel all 
around the car's interior, SAE J1850 provides for packetizing information, 
shipping it onto a bus, prioritizing packets, resolving bus contention, etc on 
a single or double wire bus.  Single wire is 10.4kbps, double is 41.6kbps.  
Harris makes a two chip set for this where one encodes/decodes messages with 
an 8bit digital interface, the other is the driver for the line.

The idea is that eventually smart sensors (like the one described above) won't 
just put out some sort of analog voltage, they will package their information 
and put it right on the bus, where the microprocessor can get the info already 
in digital form.  I would be interested in getting more information on this 
chip set and the eval board, James, if that is possible.

| 
|  They seemed apprehensive about opening themselves up to a deluge of
| e-mail, but if anybody has the urge to discuss these devices I am
| not so shy. I broached the subject of samples to them; I think that
| discreet inquiries could be handled, if it doesn't become a scene
| from a nature show.

Could you find out what other types of automotive products Harris makes, and 
post a summary?

--steve