HD8 Product documentation

Budget priced readout controller

Congratulations on your choice of the SPLat HD8 controller. SPLat gives you the ability to implement a sophisticated control system in your product easily and inexpensively, and will give you an edge that will have your competitors wondering whatever hit them!

The SPLat HD8 controller gives you a feature set rivalling competing products costing many times as much. Although costing about the same as "programmable relays", entry level single board PLCs and hobbyist products, it offers considerably more capabilities. The HD8 has been designed for applications requiring a small but sophisticated controller with a basic readout, at an absolute minimal cost.

• 3 bright, easy to read 12.5mm LED readout digits;
• 3 operator push buttons, fully programmable functionality;
• Real-world I/O: 850mA outputs and ruggedized inputs;
• 2 analog inputs 0-5V, 0-10V, 0-20mA or temperature;
• Easier to program than C, Basic or ladder;
• Large program memory (over 20K bytes, approx 12,000 instructions);
• Capable of sophisticated control functions including math, state machines, PID, algorithms, heuristics and lookup tables;
• Built in multitasking;
• Able to be networked with other Xwire compatible SPLat controllers and peripherals
• Fast: Executes approximately 15,000 high level SPLat instructions per second;
• Expansion connector for all SPLat expansion boards.

Have your first working program in less than an hour!

Like all SPLat controllers, the HD8 is extremely easy to get started with. Our programming software is free, and includes a full simulator that allows you to test your program and explore possibilities without any hardware present. Our programming language has been skillfully crafted to make the simple tasks absurdly easy to program, and yet there is a rich repertoire of advanced instructions to satisfy the sophisticated user. Our training materials are legendary (and free). The HD8 contains real world input/output circuits, so you won't have to design your own.

Every minute you invest in SPLat is an investment that lasts!

Best of all, the HD8 programming is fully compatible with our other controllers. That means if you move up to say an MMi202, or even go for a custom SPLat controller one day, everything you have learnt and 98% of the code you have written will transfer directly. SPLat is the only control system you can get started with for the price of a night out and then stay with until you are using thousands of custom units.

How do we do it?

You may be sceptical about how we can deliver so much performance at such a budget price. When we design a controller we aim for the best possible value for money. We design and re-design our circuitry to eliminate unnecessary or expensive components. As far as possible we select multi-vendor components so we can shop around. Maybe most importantly, we are engineers designing for end users, not engineers designing for engineers. We don't allow ourselves to be carried away by megahertz and gigabytes. We understand that what is really important to an OEM operating in the real world is getting the necessary performance at a price that will give a competitive advantage.

One thing we are obsessive about is build quality. We hate returns, and get very few of them (way less than 1%). Every board we make is built with strict process controls. Every board is visually inspected. Every board is 100% functionally tested. And every board is backed by our 2-year standard product guarantee and Post-Nuke repair policy.