April 18, 2010: AE-PWRPlane

On every one of my projects I end up with a rats nest of power cables going here and there. Terminal blocks seem to offer the best way of rerouting the different power planes from the power supply or batteries into the different subsystems. However, this method is really not the optimal and whenever I need to rework the project, I see myself rewiring here and there.

Since the engineer in me is about being as lazy as possible, re-screwing about a dozen wires on a per fix basis, is not an option. So I came up with a way to easily offer voltage rail back plane capabilities to my projects with a small PCB I came to call the AE-PWRPlane, from Avayan Electronics’ Power Plane.

With this board you can have two rails: one high voltage/current and one low voltage current. The idea is to route the 24V (or 12V) from batteries into the motor drivers, and the 3.3V (or 5V) into the microcontrollers and logic devices.

The board uses Molex Mini Fit Jr connectors for the power plane and conventional 0.100 inch 2 pin terminal headers for the logic voltage.

November 1, 2009 : AE-DualDC3A

It is time to enhance our line of drivers with a dual DC motor version. In this case, I have taken our AE-DC1 driver revolving around a DRV8800 and basically multiplied its resources by two. Have also increased copper planes to ensure better thermal performance, which in turns translates to higher current over longer periods of time. Decided to opt out from solder pads and added terminal blocks. The result? The new and improved AE-DualDC3A!

Same level of simplicity applies, though. Individual  ENABLE, PHASE and MODE are all the signals you need to drive along with a shared nSLEEP. Any microcontroller should be able to partner up with one of these guys. Are you ready for such a juicy controller? I sure hope so!

August 1, 2009 : AE-MDL-STPR1

Our previous Bipolar Stepper Motor driver, the MDL-STPR77 had a good run, but it was time to improve it considerably. As a result, we are proud to present the AE-MDL-STPR1, using the new Texas Instruments internal indexer bipolar stepper driver, DRV8811. This device is more rugged and has output protection, which is a must! We have also enhanced the thermal pad for better thermal impedance, jumped from 1 to 2 ounces of copper, larger pads for Schottky diodes, and better on board documentation. At the same price as the previous controller, this deal can just not get any better!

April 14, 2009: SOT-236

Meet the SOT-236 Surface Mount to Bread Board Prototyping tool. This little board will allow you to continue your bread board experiments but using SMT only components. The first on a series of SMT to Bread Board Prototyping tools.

Do not forget to tune into www.superstepper.com for more information on the superstepper architecture.