What CPU does OmniPro2 use?

Just curious what processor the OP2 uses.
 
I looked at my old spare OnQ board (HAI) and it uses a 68HC11 in a DIP package.
 
OP2 has had such a long lifespan I'm curious about parts EOL and future plans. Things are moving so fast it's sometimes hard to get an embedded board designed, certified and shipped before the selected processor is EOL'd.
 
The OP2 code optimization question also made me curious about it's cache architecture and best practice optimization techniques, although as an interpreted language there's probably not much benefit to in-lining code and other such compile time techniques.

Wiki states:
 
The 68HC11 (6811 or HC11 for short) is an 8-bit microcontroller (µC) family introduced by Motorola in 1985.Now produced by Freescale Semiconductor, it descended from the Motorola 6800 microprocessor by way of the 6809. It is a CISC microcontroller. The 68HC11 devices are more powerful and more expensive than the 68HC08 microcontrollers, and are used in automotive applications, barcode readers, hotel card key writers, amateur robotics, and various other embedded systems. The MC68HC11A8 was the first MCU to include CMOS EEPROM.
 
The OP2 bus is serial based.  The network piece was an add on added to the original bus.
 
In a way the design is similar to the control bus of planes, trains and automobiles still being utilized today.
 
IE: if it ain't broken then why consider a new bus is what I see these days...such that is why we may be driving a Google car, Amazon car, Microsoft car in the future....rather than a GM, Ford, Chrysler....
 
Went to an Intel conference a few years back where it was mentioned that BMW had partnered up with Intel to redo the control of the control bus to using Intel CPUs with a custom BMW OS.
 
That written a future Omni panel (like an OP3) would be a complete redesign.  Not sure if Leviton is even considering an Omni Pro 3 these days.
 
Personally support / repair of current Omni panels will be around for a long time by Leviton as they were built to last forever...like the old bakelite telephone.

Thanks. But does the OP2 still use the HC11? The original OP did but I don't have an OP2 board to look at.
 
I've used several different 8 bit MCUs over my career, and they were a lot of fun to work with. That said, we stopped using them for any complicated embedded products over 20 years ago.
 
Any OP3 could surely benefit from something more modern, like a nice 32 bit ARM design. Given the age of the Omni series, and the amount of work it does, one has to wonder how portable the code is.

OnQ board
 
Thinking last generation OnQ board was identical to the first generation OmniPro 2 board (3-4 serial plus chip roms).
 
I had one here purchased refurbished as a hot spare many many years ago.  I tested it on the workbench and found it defective (network piece) and sent it back within a few days.  My original intent was just to replace 2 rom chips with HAI chips which can be done easy enough. (this is documented some where)
 
What HAI product are you using today?
 
But does the OP2 still use the HC11?
 
I cannot see mine as I have two zone expanders stacked on the right side of the board. 
 
Googling some see this on the OmniPro 2.
 
The image of the OP2 board though is different than my OP2 board...looks to be 16bit..I am not sure though what and where I am looking on the board anyhow...
 

 
Here used software integration (Homeseer 2 plugin - serial) when I first purchased the first generation OmniPro2 then second generation Omnipro 2 (Homeseer 3 plugin - ethernet)
 
I guess if you wanted to look at the code you could just dump the update and look at the hex code.  None of it is published that I know of. 
 
Hardware wise here did see once an exploding cap on one HAI peers OP2 board a few years ago.
 

Hey Pete, that chip you took a photo of is actually the phone interface and voice module chip... it's a DSP that does text to speech.
 
On my newer OP2, the processor is a MC68HC812A4.  Here is the datasheet:  https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/MC68HC812A4.pdf
 
It's not very impressive by today's standards.  16 bit processor, 1K of RAM (yes, one kilobyte), running at 8 MHz.  But, it does have a wide range of nice functions on the die.... built in watchdog timer to reset the system if the software hangs, lots of analog to digital converters, SPI interface for peripherals, etc.

Thank you neilit. 
 
Where is the MC68HC812A4 located?

The MC68HC812A4 definitely is a step up from the HC11.
 
Still, by today's standards, it's quite long in the tooth. Even a low end smartphone has way, way more power than that.
 
But there's no reason to be on the bleeding edge either. 6-7 years ago I was a huge fan of the STM32 processor, that thing was highly integrated, wonderful tool and BSP support, good pricing and great fun to work with. We used it for laser instrumentation and solar optimizer products.
 
I've been out of the loop since then (retired) but something similar to the STM32 would be great for a new OP design.

pete_c said:

Thank you neilit. 
 
Where is the MC68HC812A4 located?

Click to expand...

 
Hey Pete,
 
It's the other large die chip just below the DSP chip, to the right of the old ROM sockets.  If you have an older panel you may have a different processor.

neillt said:

Hey Pete,
 
It's the other large die chip just below the DSP chip, to the right of the old ROM sockets.  If you have an older panel you may have a different processor.

Click to expand...

I'm guessing UNDER the expansion boards, so its probably not easy to see if you have these.

Thanks guys.  Yes have two zone expanders on the right such that I cannot see it.  Well the two boards cover everything up the the X10 port.
 
I did find a picture which shows the processor.
 

I saw a guy doing a project on social financing platform, he build a SDR transceiver. He did design from the ground up and he started to use a specific processor at the bigining of his project. During the course of the months, he constantly update the firmware and hardware to the point that he got a newer, faster and more advanced processor, he simply swapped it without changing the board layout (same pinout) and his project run so fast now with this new processor that he needs to slow it down in programming...
 
All this to ask, would there be a possibility to replace the existing MC68HC812A4 with a similar processor that has the same pinout with same/newer set of instructions and change the clock speed of it so we get a faster OPII ?

Theoretically it might be possible. Practically, maybe not.
 
Anytime you change the processor speed you will need to be sure the rest of the hardware will work at the new speed. Funky things can happen, memory read/write errors, comm glitches, even different EMI noise at the new clock speed causing other hardware to malfunction. HAI has good hardware but there are no guarantees there.
 
Beyond hardware there are some other unknowns due to software. Stuff like the software using timing loops that will break with a different clock speed or race conditions that work now that break due to new timing. Only HAI knows how their code is written.
 
The only way to know is to try, but if something breaks you'd be on your own.

Plus let's not forget that a lot of the panel is based on the RS-485 keypad bus, which runs at 9600 bps.  Expansion enclosures, wireless receiver, keypads, etc are all tied to that speed, and device polling can only happen so fast.

Alezis said:

All this to ask, would there be a possibility to replace the existing MC68HC812A4 with a similar processor that has the same pinout with same/newer set of instructions and change the clock speed of it so we get a faster OPII ?

Click to expand...

This whole panel is UL listed, so certainly this would undo that. Plan on $12K - $16K to get it UL listed again.