ENC28j60 how to start

[rikotech8]

Hello guys! I have some experience with CCS programming and I just bought http://store.comet.bg/Catalogue/Product/6275/ and I want to establish communication between my PC and enc28j60 via tcp/ip. What would you recommend me for beginning? Some posts, drivers, example codes ext...
Thank you in advance!
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A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

[jgschmidt]

Hi,

I'm assuming from your question that you have not done anything with embedded TCP/IP. Please be aware that any kind of development work with TCP/IP requires knowledge of the various TCP/IP protocols and how they are layered. That is not a trivial undertaking.

I used the CCS Embedded Ethernet development kit to learn how to use embedded TCP/IP. (One of the exercises in this kit is setting up a client/server connection to a PC.) That way I started with known working hardware and could experiment with the software files, which are collectively called the TCP/IP stack. Once I understood that, I ventured into making my own TCP/IP hardware, which is also not a trivial undertaking. Beginning both hardware and software development at the same time is guaranteed to be extremely frustrating because you never know if the hardware or the software or both is the problem.

CCS's TCP/IP stack is great for learning but also quite old. I've seen some posts about a more recent release but have not had a reason to check into that. My most recent work with TCP/IP used the Microchip compilers and libraries. They are frequently updated and there is a lot of support for them on the Microchip forums.

I've used modules similar to the one you mention. They usually need just power and SPI connections but still require a lot of software to make them work. While this hardware is cheap, developing for it will cost a lot of time.

There are solutions for embedded TCP/IP that don't require including the TCP/IP stack or Ethernet hardware in your application. I have 12F683-based logging systems posting to database servers over the Internet via inexpensive serial to TCP/IP boards that have TCP/IP embedded in the hardware.
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Jürgen
www.jgscraft.com

[rikotech8]

Thank you jgschmidt for the comprehensive answer! I considered to start with one of these embedded TCP/IP but the reason I already have ENC28J60 made me to ask about it. So, your very reasonable viewpoint changed my mind. Instead of reading and writing code for hours, I will accept your suggestions for the embedded TCP/IP solutions. I believe it is going to take less time.
_________________
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

[jgschmidt]

Google "wiznet ethernet" and you should find the boards. I've used several of these. It still helps to know a little about how TCP/IP works, for example the difference between UDP and TCP. A network sniffer like wireshark is useful because then you can see what's actually going back and forth. Use it to watch the traffic back and forth just for accessing a web page from your browser.

Wikipedia is a good place to start.

Cheers,
_________________
Jürgen
www.jgscraft.com