Gauging Interest - Teensy 3.2 Breakout Board

[cbyrne]

Hello CD readers!

I am working on a design for a <3"x3" board to break out the Teensy 3.1/3.2 pins to individual or paired Molex SL latching connections, same as what Hansen sells as Latching Polarized connections. Similar to servo connections, where there are one or two signals, plus power and ground.)

Currently, the board is looking like it will have:
8 Digital I/O only lines,
12 Analog In or Digital I/O
SPI
CAN
2 or 3 Serial (notionally one RS232 and one TTL)
2 I2C

Trying to gauge interest among the community if this will be something they are looking for. Any requests, reply below. Plan is to release the board as Open Hardware, but because the connectors can get expensive, looking into bulk buys and selling kits.

Thanks for the input!

[jman4747]

Absolutely. We've used them before on robots and in other projects. Plus I don't think I've seen a breakout or "shield" for the Teensy before.

If anyone doesn't know what a "Teensy 3.2" is, it's basically an Arduino with way more processing power, I/O, small footprint (more like an Arduino pro mini), and low price. Plus you program it with the Arduino IDE and any sketches that run on the Arduino run on this.


Spark fun page: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13736

Would really like to see an MXP board based on this too.

[marshall]

Can you post links to the connectors on mouser or digikey or similar? Thanks.

[cbyrne]

Originally Posted by marshall

Can you post links to the connectors on mouser or digikey or similar? Thanks.

PCB Header: 3 Pin; 4 Pin; 7 Pin
Female Wire Housing: 3 Pin; 4 Pin; 7 Pin
Female Wire Crimp Connector: Digikey

3 pin for single channel, 4 pin for I2C or paired channels (think encoders) and 7 pin for SPI. I love these connectors - shrouded from accidental contact, mechanically keyed, latching against vibration, rated up to 3A each (perfect for 22AWG 2A circuits).

Bonus: Use the same series for locking inline connectors:
Male Housing: 3 Pin; 4 Pin; 7 Pin
Male Wire Crimp Connector: Digikey

[sparkytwd]

Very cool, 2 years ago I built a breakout board for the 3.1 for driving WS2811 strips: http://hackcasual.io/blingboard/

[cbyrne]

Ok, Renders from OSH Park. Seeking comments on layout.

Top:


Bottom:


Eagle Files:
http://www.afterdarklabs.com/wp-cont...y32Breakout.7z

All the connectors on the sides are the Molex connectors discussed above. Except the ones on the wider spacing at the top - they are standard Weidmuller wire connectors.

Board measures under 3" on a side, mounting holes are on a 2.5" center spacing. Makes the Teensy a little less teeny

Power is select-able:

• Teensy powers the board through USB power and onboard regulator. (Requires no SMDs)
• Teensy 250mA LDO receives power from 5V plugged into board. (requires a few SMD for reverse voltage and current protection.)
• Board gets 5V power from robot, runs through the breakout board's 1A 3.3V LDO regulator. (requires all the SMD components - 0805 or larger for easy soldering.)

In addition, there are four power selection banks for the IO, to allow 3.3V or 5V devices to be plugged in.

[cbyrne]

Just in case anyone cares - do not use the boards as they are. We tried to use one this season for some led strips, and the outputs at the board edge were not correct.

Being a CS major and not a CE or EE, I probably made some mistake. Trying to look into the design and errors now. (I have made other boards successfully, but this was the most ambitious to date.)

[ILAMtitan]

Originally Posted by cbyrne

Just in case anyone cares - do not use the boards as they are. We tried to use one this season for some led strips, and the outputs at the board edge were not correct.

Being a CS major and not a CE or EE, I probably made some mistake. Trying to look into the design and errors now. (I have made other boards successfully, but this was the most ambitious to date.)

I am a CE/EE. Drop me a message if you want a second set of eyes for schematic and board review.

[Ringo5tarr]

Quick question-
What do you use a Teensy in? Like, this isn't a "Gauging interest" question, I would really like to know what other teams are doing with this sort of thing (since my team really isn't using it at all)

[BenjaminWard]

Are these available at this point? I've been looking into solutions like the rioDuino and this and this seems like a much better solution due to the advantages of the Teensy over the Arduino Uno.

[Alan Anderson]

I've programmed a Teensy for 3 things. One was as an example for my son to modify and extend for a senior design project (a home monitoring system). The second was a USB HID for arbitrary button inputs, with the beginnings of support for a rotary-encoder-based control knob. Finally, with an audio output peripheral as a museum exhibit controller that waits for a button to be pressed then plays a message and enables a motor to spin a turntable.

I also planned a programmable thermostat, but I could never get the built-in temperature sensor to give me reasonable data, and I wasn't motivated enough to connect an external sensor.

[cbyrne]

Originally Posted by BenjaminWard

Are these available at this point? I've been looking into solutions like the rioDuino and this and this seems like a much better solution due to the advantages of the Teensy over the Arduino Uno.

Appreciate the interest, but the breakout board is not ready yet. When we tried using it during the season, the outputs we tried where barely getting above ground. (read: major electrical error somewhere)

As I get a chance I will work over the summer on this.

[cbyrne]

Quick Status Update:
Just redid the entire board in 4 layers. Previous 2 layer board had a lot of vias, and I think they were harming the signals. Also removed the ground plane that meandered everywhere, as I suspect that was causing a lot of coupling error.

*Fingers crossed* Will let everyone know how it goes!