Friday, August 22, 2014

What the heck is PIPduino?

Introducing PIPduino
Our Jeep's steering servo controller, with this icky baseboard, was missing something. What?

Power and ground rails and a voltage regulator, that's what. So I made a 'duino clone with features for Putting In Projects and called it PIPduino.
  • Color-coded power and ground rails for each analog and digital pin, 
  • Dedicated I2C bus with 4 ports and pullups,
  • Combo SPI / ISP connector, 
  • Serial/FTDI connector,
  • Onboard voltage regulator, and
  • Flexible power options.
Goodbye shields. Use low cost breakout boards instead.

Before PIPduino (ick). And after (ah, much nicer).
Available soon on Tindie.

7 comments:

  1. I did the same thing for my teensy board:
    http://blog.davehylands.com/2014/01/micropython-running-on-teensy-31.html

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    Replies
    1. Nice. Might be fun to clone a Teensy into the PIPduino form factor...

      Also, Micro Python on Teensy? Cool. Ibrahim got Micro Python running on the OpenMV Cam (STM32F407).

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    2. Where did you get the nice colored headers?

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    3. I get 'em in bulk through Aliexpress.

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  2. Nice! Except that I'd leave off the regulator. I like to keep the regulator external, that way I just need one for all the 5V devices. Simplifies things.

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    Replies
    1. But Ted, you *can* use an external regulator, just power the board from the 5V/GND pins. That's what I'm doing with it on the self-driving Jeep.

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  3. Excellent method to harness the power of the 328... W/O all that shield crap.
    I've been doing mine on those small Veroboards from Thaishine or Tayda on Fleabay, Tayda is a little more generous but Thaishine is a US branch of Tayda and a little more expensive then Tayda ~ +10% But 3 to 4 day shipping via 1st class mail makes up for it,
    Docedison (Bob)

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