A TEXT DISPLAY NODE FOR A CONTROL ORIENTED LOCAL AREA NETWORK

In recent years, integrated circuit technology has spawned the development of many low cost and high performance microprocessors and microcontrollers. With these devices, there is an increasing interest in the implementation of distributed control networks, utilizing microprocessors in the control nodes. In this work, a low-cost liquid crystal display (LCD) unit utilizing a Hitachi HD44780 controller was designed to provide a visual display node for COLAN (Control Oriented Local Area Network). An Intel 8051 microprocessor was used to provide control services for the display and also to provide a communication interface to the network. The users in the COLAN network can remotely display and easily control the panel of LCDs by sending commands to the display control nodes through the local area network. This capability is especially usefu