Mike R / Mbed 2 deprecated Pinscape_Controller_V2

An I/O controller for virtual pinball machines: accelerometer nudge sensing, analog plunger input, button input encoding, LedWiz compatible output controls, and more.

Dependencies:   mbed FastIO FastPWM USBDevice

Fork of Pinscape_Controller by Mike R

Mike Perks

Issue: Redesign of power supply domain (Closed: Wontfix)

There are a couple of problems today with the layout of the power supplies.

This requirement is independent of the software but is probably best done with a board redesign as part of V3.

For output boards, it is useful to have a variety of voltages including 5V, 12V, 24V, etc. The problem is things like the output board only have one power input. Instead the 32 FETs could be divided into 2 domains with separate power (12 of one and 12 of another). Same for the fused output board (8 + 8), solenoid board (4+ 4) etc.

Each board today has a 3.3V regulator circuitry. Instead that could be done on the main board and distributed to the other boards. That leaves a little more room on each board. It also avoids the problem of sending 3.3V to the existing Chime board over the 10 pin IDC cable.

Thus each board would have a 4-way pluggable terminal block with pins for logic voltages of 5V, GND, GND, and 3.3V.

Each power board would also have a 4-way pluggable terminal block with pins for power voltages of V1, V1_GND, V2_GND, and V2.

1 comment:

Mike R
23 Nov 2019

This one's old and probably not relevant now that you've designed your own separate all-in-one board set, but a couple of comments for future reference...

I think your comment about 24V was based on a previous understanding before you knew about how the low-side switching for the outputs worked. There's nothing that the boards themselves need 24V for; you presumably were talking about being able to hook up 24V feedback devices, which of course you can do, just like you can hook up 50V feedback devices or 6.3V devices or whatever else, in whatever combination.

Re the 3.3V daisy chaining, I'm actually not too keen on that idea. Those little 3.3V regulator chips have a pretty limited load they can handle. Giving each board its own regulator means that no one has to worry about overloading one by adding more boards. It does take up more board space and add another component, but not that much board space, and it's a cheap component.