A new I2C expander board is in unofficial development

Recently there was discussion on I2C for an ADC. I have been developing several expander boards for users in case required but none are ‘officially supported’. They would be as required to help users.

Now I am fabricating a very flexible expander board. This board is all I2C and is meant to augment users who still want the sonar board and this are very IO limited.

Here is what this board has and I put this out on this forum to judge ‘interest’. This will be a custom board I make and is not ‘officially’ supported at this time. No promises yet. BUT I am making it and should there be enough interest we will see how this evolves.

Features In A Nutshell:

  • Designed to plug into MCB and allow OLED display to sit on top of it like other expander boards I have been doing.
  • Has a 4-input 16-bit ADC which we lacked forever. I bet we can squeeze 14 bits out of it, 16 I doubt.
  • Has two 12-bit DACs that remember their settings through powercycles.
  • Has up to 6 relay drivers able to drive 16V relays with fair current
  • Has 2 leds like the other boards that can show indications the user chooses OR if inputs can show state of the input (users choice if input or output) These 2 lines can also be 24ma sink or light current inputs.
  • Has 2 on-board switches that can act as inputs. This would allow us to have a ‘soft’ reset switch that we have never had and would be valuable. For both of these switches user can put in his own switches.
  • Has a separate user I2C expansion jack. So one jack plugs into MCB, one can be used for OLED socket and now a 3rd one for user expansion of whatever, of course we sturnly warn user of short and controlled I2C if he chooses to use this jack. This jack will also be JST capable for flexibility.

We have other expander ‘specials’ but none with ADC and DAC. We do have accelerometer boards but again, not officially supported to the general user base.

Let me know if this is of serious interest to anyone.
Mark

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Just an Update: The board is back for a few prototypes and seems fully functional.

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Update: A document has been written to describe this versatile expander board. We have some other digital only expander boards designed prior to this one that are mostly for driving leds and reading switches but we do not have them documented yet. We are trying to design these boards so they can be ‘piggy back’ to add more IO if one board is not enough.