MCU Peripherals

Peripherals controlled by the MCU.

• PSU - PSU is the main power supply unit. The main active components are a charger IC and a battery management IC. With the 4 cell battery pack, it act as a buffer for high current demand and as a UPS, to execute a graceful shutdown.
• RTC (DS3231MZ+) - Battery buffered realtime clock. Required for time triggered events, for example data transfer window. Also, the SCU requests the MCU for the current date time during SCU startup.
• Haptic Motor Driver - The MCU controls the driver through i2c protocol, to drive the vibration motor attached to the science unit.
• Power switches - The MCU controls the FET's to the power converters. By disabling unused components, more current can be used to charge the PSU batteries to shorten the charge time.
• LED driver - The MCU generates two independent PWM signals to controls the brightness of the LED's for camera illumination.
• SD switch - If the SCU doesn't signals the MCU a successful boot up after a predefined time, the MCU assumes a corrupt SD flash device and will turn over to the spare SD storage.
• USB switch - During data transfer window, the USB X datelines are switched to the USB port.
• USB hub
• Temperature sensors - Get current temperatures from one-wire sensors via an I2C to one-wire bridge.
• EEPROM SPI - Data storage for log data.
• I2C switch