Note: All photographs appearing on this page are freely usable for any purpose. Links to high-resolution versions of the pictures appear below each picture.
Digital Data Acquisition & Control System
PPBreakin
12-channel screw terminal breakout board with pullup resistors
High-resolution image shot with a Canon EOS 5D MII
The PPBreakin board is a small adapter board that accepts a cable from a PPDIO96 bank connector and brings all the signals out to two-pin screw terminals. This breakout board is great when you have a set of dry contact signals you want to bring in to the PPDIO96 and you don't require the isolation or level-shifting capabilities of the PPOpto-12 board.
The PPBreakin board also allows you to provide pullup resistors on the PPDIO inputs to the PPRlyio-12 board to prevent oscillations when a floating input is not pulled high or low (the PPBreakin board will pull the signal low.
The PPBreakin board is a simple, low-cost, two-layer circuit board with the following feature set:
- Low cost design
- Two-layer circuit board includes a ground plane on the bottom layer for noise reduction.
- 10kΩ pullup resistors (+5V) for all active signals
- PPDIO96-bank-compatible 20-pin male header
- Two-pin screw terminals (signal+ground) for each of the 12 digital I/O signals present on each PPDIO96 bank that provide a signal/ground pair for each PPDIO96 digital signal pin
- Two sets of PPDIO bank headers allowing a PPBreakin board to be used as a pullup-resistor bridge between two PPDIO bank compatible devices
- Uses standard DAQ system 35mm DIN rail brackets
Bill of Materials (BOM) for the PPBreakin board:
- (1) 20-pin (2x10) male header (ribbon cable connector)
- (12) Two-terminal screw terminals (5mm/0.2" centers)
- (12) 10kΩ 1/4-watt resistors
- (1) PPBreakin PCB
- Optional: one set of horizontal 35mm DIN rail mounts for DAQ boards
Note: If you only want a few PPBreakin PCBs, contact Plantation Productions (randy@plantation-productions.com) to see if there are any in stock. Bare boards are $5 each plus shipping. Fully assembled boards with DIN rail brackets are $40 each, plus shipping. If you need more than a couple and you're not in a huge hurry, it costs about $10 (plus about 4-6 weeks) to have a set of 10 manufactured and shipped to you from China. I use Seeed Studio Fusion PCD service (https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion.html). The PPBrealout PCBs are two-layer boards. Here are the Gerber files for them (provide these files to Seeed Studio or your personal PCB manufacturer).
PPBreakin Gerber Files for PCB
If you want to modify or enhance the PPBreakin design, or re-layout the PCB using Eagle, here are the Eagle files:
PPBreakin Eagle files (Schematic and board layout)
If you simply want to view the schematic on-line, you'll find that here:
The DIN rails were created using AutoDesk's Fusion 360 (to produce STL files) and I personally print the rails on a Lulzbot Taz6 3D printer using ABS filament (ABS is recommended for this job, PLA and PETG are a bit brittle). The STL files can be found here:
PPBreakin DIN Rail Brackets 3D printer files
