3D Technology Information

Diolan low cost USB modules are widely used for a number of automation tasks. All the adapters can operate either on 3.3V or 5V on GPIO. The adapters are compatible with USB 2.0 (as well as 1.1 & 1.0) Full-Speed USB device specification. Wide range of ready to use applications with free source code are available for each of the adapter. Here I present a comparison of the SPI Bus Host Adapter (SPI-10), I2C USB Interface Adapter (U2C-12), and USB-IO Interface Adapter (GPIO-24).

Both adapters GPIO-24 and SPI-10 support USB to GPIO interface and have 24 user-configurable IO pins. Each of GPIO-24 pins can be independently switched to one of the following modes: digital input, digital output, PWM and single pulse sending.

Unlike GPIO-24, SPI-10 also supports USB to SPI interface with SPI read, write and full duplex SPI transactions; SPI Master and SPI Slave configuration and with configurable SPI Bus clock polarity, phase and frequency.

GPIO-24 is naturally cheaper than SPI-10.

Both adapters are RoHS Compliant. The adapters are Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000/98 32-bit and 64-bit compatible.

Both adapters SPI-10 and U2C-12 support USB to SPI interface with configurable phase, polarity and frequency. However, SPI-10 may have SPI Master and SPI Slave configurations.

Both adapters support USB to GPIO interface; however SPI-10 has 24 configurable IO pins and U2C-12 – only 23.

The U2C-12 is newer than the SPI-10, and in general is more flexible and less expensive. In addition to SPI and GPIO interface, U2C-12 supports I2C, SMBUS and other serial and parallel interfaces and buses from your PC.

The U2C-12 is supported on Windows, Linux and MacOS. The SPI-10 has full support for Windows (7/Vista/XP/2000/98 32-bit and 64-bit compatible), limited support for Linux, and limited public support for the Mac.