Construction details for Revpi Connect

Topics about the Hardware of Revolution Pi
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volker
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Joined: 09 Nov 2016, 15:41
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Construction details for Revpi Connect

Post by volker »

We are sorry for not yet being able to publish the schematics of our new RevPi Connect. But we promise we will do so soon.
Meanwhile I would like to answer the following inquiry of a customer:
It would help to have insight from the Kunbus team as to what those two boards are, and how the two Eth ports / boards are related / connected.
First of all I need to say: Please be very careful when opening the case of a RevPi Core or Connect. These cases have not been built to be opened by customers. There are small plastic parts which easily break or bend when using too much force. We have published a short instruction of how to do it correctly if you really want to go the risk in the forum but do not recommend to do so!
Yes indeed there are 2 PCBs in a RevPi Connect. 1 is very close to the RevPi Core PCB. The only difference is enhanced mounting of the CM3 (using screws to secure the CM3), enhanced grounding of the USB/RJ45 metal housings and a missing 2nd SPI Ethernetcontroller for the missing rigth side PiBridge. Using a flat ribbon connection to the 2nd PCB we are providing several GPIOs, an SPI bus and a USB bus from the hub on the 1st PCB.
On the 2nd PCB we are using a second LAN9512 chip as USB hub / Ethernet controller which is simply cascaded to the first (LAN9514) one. Its 2 USB channels are used for a) FTDI to UART for ConBridge (SPI from 1st PCB is also used on the ConBridge) and b) FTDI to RS485 for the front side RS485 connector. Its Ethernet controller is used for the 2nd Ethernet RJ45.
The rest of the 2nd PCB is digital input, relays output (both via GPIOs), Hardware WD using MAX6370 with (1/1/1 configuration at SET0-3) and several gates / monoflops / MOSFets etc. to control the WD / Relais configuration and LEDs. The WD out is triggering a 1 second monoflop which is directly connected (via flt ribbon cable) to the Enable pin of the 1st PCB board's 24 to 5 V power supply.
USB, RS485, UART, SPI and Ethernet are controlled by their generic Linux drivers so there is no RevPi specific stuff about these Interfaces. You should be able to use them just as if they would have been a dongle plugged in the USB slot of CM3 (e.g. you get an Eth0 and Eth1 for the 2 Ethernet controllers). Thus any device like transceivers using the ConBridge SPI and/or UART can be directly integrated into the Linux OS (other as PiBridge Modules which do need our piControl Kernel driver).

Hope this helps to understand the HW of RevPi Connect until we publish the schematics.
Unser RevPi Motto: Don't just claim it - make it!
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