External LED Control

The NB1000 is intended to be used with the LB1000 board, which provides:


Green and Red LED Pair — System Status Indication

These LEDs are controlled by the SG and SR pins of the EM1000. Further information on status LEDs can be found in Status LEDs.


Green and yellow LED pair — Ethernet Status Indication

These LEDs are connected to the EG and EY lines of the EM1000 that control the green and yellow LEDs on the NB1000.


LED Bar — Wireless Signal Strength indication

These LEDs are controlled through three GPIO lines of the EM1000 — GPIO46, GPIO47, and GPIO48.

GPIO46 is the reset line of the LED bar. Clearing this line sets all five outputs to LOW, which turns all LEDs ON. GPIO47 is a clock line — a positive (LOW-to-HIGH) transition on this line "shifts in" the data on the GPIO48 line. The circuit that controls the LEDs is shown below. The LED numbers correspond to numbers shown in the LB100x drawing.

A diagram illustrating the LED bar control circuit.

If you want to switch an LED ON, then set the data line LOW. The data bit for LED1 (indicating the highest signal strength) is clocked in first. That's the short explanation.  In further detail, we can say:

So assuming that all LEDs are OFF and each row means that we have toggled through one clock cycle:

Clock cycle

Data

LED1

LED2

LED3

LED4

LED5

1

LOW

ON

OFF

OFF

OFF

OFF

2

LOW

ON

ON

OFF

OFF

OFF

3

HIGH

OFF

ON

ON

OFF

OFF

4

LOW

ON

OFF

ON

ON

OFF

5

HIGH

OFF

ON

OFF

ON

ON

As you can see, each clock cycle sets a new state for LED1 which directly corresponds to the state of the Data line, and shifts all previous LED states.


External LED Control

Green and Red LED Pair — System Status Indication

Green and yellow LED pair — Ethernet Status Indication

LED Bar — Wireless Signal Strength indication