BasicPI

My first choise for a MCU for the I2C/SPI Adapter card was STM32F042F6 since I have 4 of these in my stock, but buying these now is a nightmare. Looking at MCU’s I really would like to use STM32G0B1KE, but price difference between ST and Digikey is a 3 x. so what I decided to fall back on is a prototype made with STM32F105Rx MCU’s. I purchased a lot of these some years ago and I need to use them for something. These MCU’s was purchased from Aliexpress, so I might be wasting my time – but, this is for a prototype I can optimize later. Using a LQFP64 rather than a TSSOP20 is a big difference in size, but it will do as a prototype.

The only know issue I have with these MCU’s is that I have not been able to get USB working and while ST say these are 64K I believe mine is of the older 32K batch – but, who cares. They have CAN, I2C, SPI and UART and plenty of juice for this job + I get rid of my stock of 50 or so STM32F105Rx MCU’s – which are too expensive these days!

I can get hold of STM32G0B1KE MCU’s that are 7mm LQFP32 size, but for a price closer to 8.- USD while ST give budgetary price of 1/3 of that. Digikey gone greedy. I bought STM32G491Rx earlier this year for ca 8.- USD, while they now cost 12.- USD on Digikey. Digikey is quick and reliable, but their pricing are extreme these days. I do hope the current semiconductor shortage will come to an end.

One of the drawbacks with these older MCU’s is that you need external crystal. I attempted a USB/CAN converter with this MCU some time back and never got USB working. Firstly I did the istake of not having a crystal, secondly it just never worked – that said I never tried to much either so I don’t know if this was bad batch or design error or something else. I would primarly like to use CAN on this adapter, so I think it is wise to dig up some old cards and see if I can get CAN working first.

The MCU’s I got is mostly RB which is 128Kb Flash, but I also have some 107Rx and 105RC that are compatible. Adding a LQFP64 I probably have space for both CAN and RS485 – it will be nice to use up this stock anyway.

My next module is a TOF sensor that detect distance to objects, but those modules are based on I2C and I might need some distance between detector and PLC, so I have 2 options.

1. I can move a PLC module close to the I2C device
2. or I can use a separate RS485/CAN Interface.

It sound a bit overkill to create a module that basically convert RS485/CAN to RS485/CAN, but the RS485/CAN on all modules are IPC designed for high speed, short range that don’t need isolation. If I want to communicate with adapters 2-5 meters away I need some isolation, power and slower speeds + I would like to connect to multiple devices. I use RS485 in this example because that allows me to use cheaper MCU’s on the Adapter. CAN is more ideal, but harder to align and require MCU’s with CAN Interface. That said I will create both because I like CAN.

I2C or SPI on the other hand is TTL logic and will not survice mutch cable dispance.b Below is a typical Laser/TOF sensor with I2C.

I want to add TVS or Photo couplers to the PowerServoe and looking at the PCB lanes above you can see it is only five lanes crossing from left to right and I have plenty of space. All the caps are leftovers from PWM3 and can be partly removed if needed. This one is easy to make fully isolated. The only problem is that the opto couplers require some space and these boards are small… lets see what we can do.

I decided to go with a Power Key, meaning the motherboard will provide 24V, 12V and 6-8V on 3 separate pins. The module then decide what power it need by pin usage as illustrated below. The top image is my Power Servo Controller, while the lower one is PWM3. If a module need to select between 12 and 24V it can provide it’s own jumpers. The objective here is plug & play with minimal options to making errors.

This is a 2 x Power Servo module I just made based on the PWM3. The circuit is very similar except I removed the DRV8313 and 3 of the current sensors. Controlling a servo is about sending a pulse at 50Hz between 500uS to 1500uS – and I have some 60Kg Servoes that can drain up to 6.5A – so I kept the 6P connector and made 2 power servo connectors that actually can support the currents needed. I need to add TVS (or opto coupler) on the servo signals and this is done – most of the routing was kept from PWM3.

In this draft I have suggested to re-use the 24V pin as 6-8V pin – I will probably modify that because I woudl need jumpers on the motherboard for this and it would be a disaster if I plug in a module on the wrong slot – I kept the capacitor bank from PWM3, but have plenty of space to move that onto. I might even consider opto-couplers on signals on this one.

Current usage on a RDS5160 is rated to 3,5A on 6V and 6,2 at 8.4V – I have ca 10A in total on this module and those header pins will support ca 16A – it is the PCB lanes that limit the currents. But, it is a current sensor on all the power consumers because the real budget will be what the motherboard supports.

Three different modules mounted above – I need to finish the motherboard and the real modules have some text, but looking at PWM3 and teh PowerServo it would be easy to do a mistake – so I will stick to the plan of separate pins for different voltages.

I have just made both these boards, but strugled far more to route the PWM3 board than Ethernet board – looking at the two I got a bit surpriced – On the top board (Ethernet) you can see the same infrastructure components as on the bottom outlined – the top has an extra SPX3819 and SPI-Flash, but notice the difference in density – how much space they occupy. I will order these regardless, but I do notice that on top layer I use ca 60% for MCU and on bottom layer ca 30% for standard ecostructure. Basically I have marginal space for IO as is.

But, keep in mind that this design allows for larger modules – double height and double width as well. It does however question how many of my modules that I can do as 25 x 45 mm size. It also make me consider increasing the minimum module size – that said I am as hesitating to increase as I was to decrease size – I want to give it a try first – collect experience. There will guaranteed be a revision 1.1 of these boards anyway.

One concern is that the W5500 breakout pins get to close to 24V power pin – I will leave that as is, but it might need attention later.

A bigger concern is the need for 24V, 12V and 5V for IO. I have som 60Kg servoes and would like to connect them as well – they need 5 or 12V – so what I am thinking is to extend the 2 pin header with GND, 24V to a 4 pin with GND, 24,12 and 5V – you simply only provide the pins you use. The header pins are good for ca 10A and the PSU is not the modules problem here (motherboard or extern module).

For now I will just add a simple 5V PSU for MCU on the motherboard and use an external PSU as power driver, but I will need all 4 layers to deliever power here because motors and servoes are suckers to power up – servos have a tendency to start and align a position as you power up – and for 12 small servoes I needed ca 10A in peak. Power usage once started is smaller and can be controlled in software.

I am thinking two different servo modules – one for 2x power servoes, and one 6 channel. I might also make a double width module with 16 channels etc – lets see.

Servo and/or Distance TOF interface is my next module(s). The TOF is needed for robotics being able to sence their surroundings and I will start with my own car because I lack distance censors in back and front.

86 components on 25 x 45 mm – it don’t look like much in 3D, but it was actually quite hard to route even on 4 layers.

• MCU STM32G491RE
• DRV8313 for 3 x PWM
• 4 x Current Sensors
• 1 x DC Input Sensor
• 1 x CAN-FD Tranceiver (IPC)
• 1 x RS485 Tranceiver (IPC)
• 32Kb FRAM
• SW controlled terminators
• 8 – 24V support
• 300uF capacitance on 24V on-board.

Some of you will recall that I made a similar module before (below). This was 20 x 50mm and 2 layers. It has a 60V DC/DC that worked with a tweak and hall sensors that I never tested – but it was components on one side only. The motor driver worked well – it was CAN here as well. I never used F303, I just used F103 instead. But, it is a 48 pin version of the MCU, No FRAM and no current sensors on this – and it lack capacitanse on-board.  This old board was tested with 50ich Volt, but  I  realized later that  some  of the  capacitors  did  not  hold the speck  – fake  Chinese  crap.  The new  board  will  not  be using components  bought  on AliExpress  – lesson  learned!

Having done an Ethernet Module and a PWM module I want to just get those assembled and evaluate the format as I go. Looking at the module above you can see that is no space for 2 extra SOP8 circuits and 4 current shuts – the circuit above is 40 components, while the new one is 86 components – I literally have no free space on the new one.

Showing 3D of the 3 x PWM Module. I had to reduce Voltage to 24V due to capacitors, but 12V or 24V should be ok. I added a 2-pin header for PWM Voltage and a capacitor bank as well as the 4 current sensors. The TSOP28 has a PAD so the middle of the top layer needs to stay clean – I will look into getting 48V supported, but 24V is ok for this little module.

This is the 3D from a 4 module motherboard. I originally planned to use standad 90mm wide boxes, meaning that the motherboard probably needed to be 86 – 88mm wide, but this draft is 91mm wide. It means I will have issues using standard 90mm low cost wide boxes, but 2,5 mm is a lot to cut on each board. The reason for the extra mm is because the motherboard need to leave ca 1 mm between boards otherwise it would be to tight. Board cuts are not that clean or accurate ans 1 mm gap leaves plenty of space for inaccurate fits.

Back to the box issue I am tempted to make my own custom boxes using a 3D printer. I also need some custom cover on the modules and that might cause me to leave extra space for per module, but that is for later. I like my 45 x 25 mm module design, so I hesitate to change it. The issue is that it is easy to remember and if I continue to shrink the board it will leave the format useless. This is actually a very small board as is,

I like the flat-packed, modular design because this allows me to assemble modular systems that is easy to fit on any equipment. The 3D module below show 4 x Ethernet modules mounted since that is the only module I have yet. I have not added headers on the motherboard, but distance between motherboard and module is ca correct. One nice detail here is that adding electronic components on the bottom will shelter them a bit as well. The total width will grow to ca 100mm if I add a box per module. In that case I will have a bottom box for motherboard and a separate top box for each module + dummy for unused slots. That will add 4 mm on each board – 2mm on each side – so the modules would be 49 x 29 on the outside and 100mm wide in total. I need to work on the mechanical design details, but I think this will work out fine. The ethernet module have some extra height due to RJ45 module and it’s headers.

Just adding a differnt view – removed the modules at right and moved in the template module 3D to give a better idea of how a real system might look.

A minor detail here is that I have started to export picture more directly from KiCAD – something that saves me time.