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This is the list of internal standards used in the entire Curuxa Project.
All Main Boards and Modules follow a common naming scheme based on short, easy to remember acronyms. You can see this scheme at the following places:
Data connectors are a standard configuration for intercommunicating Main Boards and Modules.
Simple data connectors are rows of three pins:
Simple modules which only need one data pin would be connected to the Main Board using a three-pin female header.
Modules that require two data pins would be connected to the Main Board using a six-pin, double-row female header, or two data connectors.
Complex Modules that require more than two data pins would design their own connectors, and they may have different connectors for power and data pins.
![]() Main Board showing data connectors |
The female connector can be used to extend the length of another data connector, but it's usually removed when building a Module, because Modules only need the male side for being connected to a Main Board
You often will need to remove with a cutter the little extra plastic next to the pin #1, in order to be able to fit it in most Main Boards.
You can also build your own Data Connectors from scratch. You only need a 3-pin female header strip, some wire some heat-shrink tubing, and a few minutes.
![]() One Module connected to an MBP40 |
ICSP (In-Circuit Serial Programming) are the microcontroller programming pins. It is an interface and protocol developed by Microchip and used by all of their microcontrollers and DSP-controllers.
It consists of six digital input/output pins:
The connector used by all Main Boards is the standard PICkit connector, so you can plug them easily. Other programmers, such as ICD2, ICD3, ICE... use other connector types, but they are all based on the same pins, so you can build adapters easily.
![]() Main Board pinout |
![]() MBP18 plugged to a PICkit 2 | ![]() MBP40 plugged to a PICkit 2 | ![]() MBP18 plugged to a PICkit 2 |
Two pins are used for connecting the power lines between Main Boards and Modules when a standard Data Connector is not used, and powering your circuits from external power supplies.
Pin 1 is always Vcc, the power line (usually a red wire). Pin 2 is ground (usually a black wire).
Most Main Boards don't have independent pins for Power Connectors. If you need to plug an external power supply to it, or power a Module using a Power Connector, you can use any empty Vcc-GND pair. Doing that would prevent you for plugging a Data Connector there, but that's usually not a problem because you will have empty connectors in most of your designs.
![]() A power connector plugged to MBP18 |
![]() A power connector plugged to MBP18 | ![]() Data Connectors and a Power Connector plugged to MBP18 | ![]() Data Connectors and a Power Connector plugged to MBP18 |