Last call, round 2: Kegbot Arduino shield PCB
Thanks to some recent prodding and help from Geoff over at Kegbot Milwaukee, we're getting very close to building a batch of "Kegshield" boards for our Kegboard firmware. I know, we said "last call" in our last post -- what, you've never heard of a lock-in?
Though we originally proposed a 2-tap Arduino shield, we had an epiphany after a morning shave with a 5-bladed razor and said, "Fuck everything, we're doing six taps." With some swagger in our step, we proudly announced that the shield has been redone, in luscious Arduino Mega proportions.
But building a board flexible and cheap enough for lots of different configurations has required hard decisions to be made. In addition to dropping the perplexing (and irritating) on-board strobe light, and the prohibitively complex "douche sensor", we've once again settled on a smaller, pint-sized layout. Here's a recent draft:
We're still retaining the features that seem most important and commonly useful, including:
- 4 general-purpose relays, for valves (or springing elaborate traps)
- 2 RJ45 "keg tap" jacks, each with connections for two flow meters and OneWire temperature/authentication sensing
- Stackable, can put other Arduino goodies on top
- Optional XBee interface, wirelessly reprogrammable
We're still tweaking with the layout, but mostly there. What does it mean? Hop on #kegbot if you'd like to get some last-minute bling on this thing!
