Last call: Kegbot Kegboard Shield, Second Draft
Update, Aug 2010: See our most recent post with even more changes.
After chatting with a few Kegbotters about the first draft Kegboard arduino shield (thanks for the feedback, Geoff, Jared, and others!), we realized our last design was like making an afternoon visit to Toronado, only to settle for a half-pint of Pliny the Elder: the glass isn't half-full, it's just too damn small!
After chatting with a few Kegbotters about the first draft Kegboard arduino shield (thanks for the feedback, Geoff, Jared, and others!), we realized our last design was like making an afternoon visit to Toronado, only to settle for a half-pint of Pliny the Elder: the glass isn't half-full, it's just too damn small!
So, on a sunny San Francisco Saturday, we drew the blinds, tapped into our reserve cache of SmartPower energy drink, and spent the next 8 hours fiddling around madly in our favorite board editor. The Kegboard shield has been reworked around an Arduino Mega footprint; here's the result:
And, the corresponding, much girthier schematic:
The new design has all of the features of the first draft, plus:
- Up to six RJ45s, one for each supported flowmeter input. (Each jack routes two flow inputs, as shown in the annotated board, so you can support 6 taps with 3 cables.)
- 4 relay blocks, for switching small loads on and off.
- 6 general purpose blocks (power, ground, and signal), for use with an external device (such as the SparkFun relay board.)
Of course, those without the luxury of an Arduino Mega (or 6 taps - jeez, guys!) can depopulate many of the components here and use it in 2-tap mode with a plain old Arduino. The relay blocks, general output blocks, and most of the RJ-45s are all optional, bringing the component cost down to a 6-pack or two.
Your author still has a few tweaks to make (the optional XBee device needs some level shifting, and some components might be rearranged), but overall we're very close to sending this one off to BatchPCB for a test fab.
Last call: Problems? Ideas?
Next: Last call, round 2: Kegbot Arduino shield PCB
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