More Custom PCBs Arrived
I submitted another order with the wonderful Dorkbot PCB prototyping service a few weeks ago, and promptly got it back the usual 14 days after ordering it. From top to bottom:
- The second spin of the SerialCouple thermocouple ADC board. Given a thermocouple connected to the right side of the board, this board will convert it into ascii values and feed it back over the standard 6 pin FTDI serial connector on the left at 9.6k or 115k. This board corrects a few problems with the first revision; namely the MISO/MOSI pins between the AVR and MAX31855 being reversed (which was correctable in software, but sloppy), and the board missing all of my custom silkscreen, which I had very carefully placed on the wrong layer in Eagle.
- The board on the right is a relatively simple breakout board from the GoodFET connector to a five pogo-pin bed of nails targeting the IM-ME. I did integrate a forward diode to drop the power supply from 3.3V to the 2.5V the IM-ME normally runs on, but I'm not sure if that's even required.
- The final board on the bottom is the next step in my IR communications experiments. It has an MSP430G2452 connected to a 38kHz IR receiver, a constant current IR LED driver (borrowed from the DP USB IR toy), and all of PORT1 brought out to an edge connector meant to be plugged into a breadboard or as a daughter board for other projects. The 4 position DIP switch onboard is meant for being an address set, such that several of these boards could be deployed as addressable general purpose 8 bit I/O boards. They could then be used to build a small inter-room telemetry network for controlling lights or turning on computers without WoL, or anything else that could be sent over 1200 baud or less. I will certainly be posting about this more once I have a few of them talking to each other, but I wouldn't expect that to happen with my current summer schedule.