Does anyone have experience of differential line drive SN751178N

[rhubarbdog]

Hi,
I'm transmitting data at high rates and have reached the limit of a piece of wire.
A post on another site regarding this introduced me to the IC differential line driver.
I have received some help from Texas Instruments http://www.ti.com/ in identifing a component.
I have chosen the SN751178N it's only £2 on ebay
Does anyone have example circuit with pin numbers of logical names like DE etc.
I have 2 micro controlers (pyboards) https://store.micropython.org/store/ and I am communicating between them using UART in one direction only.

 

[Harald Kapp]

You finf the datasheets here.

What is your "high data rate" anyway? Talking UARTs is it below 1 MBps? I'd like to point you to EIA/TIA-485-A (ex. RS-485) which is really easy to handle. Transceivers are readily available from many manifacturers (Maxim, Ti, Analog Devices, Linear Technology - you name it). The MAX13433E for example (1 transmitter, 1 receiver) is available at ~2.5 €, that's ~ 2.15 £ from reliable vendors (not Ebay). Other chips can be had for as little as 1.11 €.

Note that for long distances shielded twisted pair cable is a must. The shield reduces noise from electric fields, the twisting reduces noise from (electro-)magnetic fields.
Also note that contrary to common belief you should supply a third wire (possibly use the shield) for a common ground connection between transmitter and receiver. Although being differential RS-485 works in many cases without that common ground, this option increases reliability.

In a noisy environment it may be necessary to use electrically isolated interfaces to minimize distortions of the signal introduced by e.g. stray currents between separate devices.
For really long distances (> 1200 m acc. to the standard, > 100 m acc. to me ) I recommend optical transmission which is also much less susceptible to electromagnetic noise and therefore also an option for short distances.