Radio Control Interface Unit
The C3211-4 Radio Control Interface Unit (RCIU) has been designed to provide interface to and control of radio hardware that was not originally designed to be operated in an automated fashion using PC hardware/software. A typical example of this would be a Push-To-Talk (PTT) radio, designed to operate with human interaction; with the RCIC, and possibly minimal modification of the PTT radio, we can control the PTT function of the radio via a RCIU interface. Without software control the RCIU provides very little functionality, a software control application/library is required to interface with the main board IO features, and thus external radio hardware.
The C3211-4 Radio Control Interface Unit (RCIU) has been designed to provide control of external communications hardware via three control interfaces/ports.
- Two 25-pin Programmable Relay and IO Ports
- 14 Relay Closures
- 1 ADC (10 bit)
- 1 DAC (5 bit)
- 3 DC Low-power DC Outputs (+3.3VDC|+5VDC|+12VDC)
- Two USB Ports
- RJ11 Modem Port
The RCIU is comprised of two main assemblies, an Intel NUC based controller and the C3211-4 main board. The controller is an integral part of the C3211-4 main board, meaning that the main board is not designed to be functional without the controller. This differs from our previous designs where the unit was designed to operate with an external controller, but could also operate standalone (using an embedded micro-controller).
CorNic provides a very power software solution, Analog Mission Studio (AMS), specifically designed for interfacing with the RCIU IO features and the control of external radio hardware, and provide a diverse analog audio waveform generation capability for transmission over the radio channel; the standard configuration of the RCIU includes the AMS software package.
