Toplevel Technologies has worked with Rabbit Processors since 2002. We are certified ZWorld Rabbit consultants! We are experienced with the Rabbit 2000 and the BL2100 Smartcat board the Rabbit 3000 and associated development kit. Digi Corporation recently purchased Z-world Rabbit.

We like the Rabbit processor platform because of the level of support, capabilities, and abundant choice of peripheral IO.

Z World Rabbit has telephone support available for $150 per year, which is cheap considering one phone call alone can save the $150 sign up fee. Also, Rabbit technical support is a lot less expensive than Toplevel Technologies tech support – at least for non-clients. We have found them to be very responsive and knowledgeable and well worth the yearly fee. There is not a separate number to call, just call Rabbit, quote your customer number and they put you through to one of their engineers.

Web and email tech support is free. Much documentation exists for the Rabbit family of processors and sometimes you have to dig a little for the information. However, considering the range of "plug-in" applications and library functions, it is relatively easy to get high-level functionality up and running quickly. The large technical support community is also a very good resource and it is a good place to start to find pointers to solutions. Rabbit also provides training and we have attended Rabbit training seminars with a focus on Internet connectivity.

Out of the box libraries included math, TCP/IP, RS232, I2C, real time clock and GPS to mention just a few. Board IO varies between modules. The BL2100 Smartcat single board computer allows up to 12v IO, while the core modules operate at the 5v level. See the Rabbit Website for specific information.

Rabbit micro-controllers are rich in features. For example the Rabbit BL2100, which runs at 22.1 Mhz includes 128K of SRam, 256 Flash, an Ethernet port, 24 digital inputs, 16 digital outputs, a ten-bit timer, and a real time clock.

We have used five RS232 ports simultaneously on more than one project! We connected an SDI-12 device, a serial IO camera, a modem, a data logger, and a programming/configuration interface working together on the same platform using one microprocessor. The Rabbit series of microprocessors are ideal for those larger applications that need lots of on board data storage. Because data can be stored in SRAM the is no need to wait 5ms for a flash write.

Note: The BL2100/2000 loses the ten-bit timer (TimerB) when using analog IO, and Toplevel Technologies has a workaround for using TimerA when timed pulse generation is required!