PiRaTe - The Pi Radio Telescope Board

Main carrier board for components required for the operation of a DIY RPi-based AzAlt telescope mount which will be utilized to operate a radio telescope.

Features

Accomodates a Pololu Dual VNH5019 Motor Driver Shield
Accomodates two RS422-Converters for interfacing industry standard SSI rotational encoders
Accomodates two ADS1115 break-out boards for analog inputs: one for measuring the motor currents and two fieldstrength voltages and one for surveillance of four system voltages (3.3V, 5V, 12V and 24V) through resistive dividers
One 40-pin GPIO pinheader interface to RPi
Accomodates one GNSS receiver board
Screw connector terminals for connection and debugging
Accomodates a 4-channel relay board
Accomodates a level shifter board for translation of voltage levels from/to 3.3V GPIO
Connection for 1-wire and some general purpose digital I/O

The software is hosted on github under https://github.com/hangeza/indi-rpi-radiotelescope.

It consists of a customized device driver for the INDI ecosystem.

Design Drawing

schematic diagram

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IO-Board
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PCB

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PCB_PiRaTe-Mainboard
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BOM

BOM download Purchase Parts

ID	Name	Designator	Footprint	Quantity
1	HDR-M-2.54_1x2	5V	HDR-M-2.54_1X2	1
2	HDR-M-2.54_1x1	GPIO0,GPIO1	HDR-M-2.54_1X1	2
3	CONN-TH_2P-P5.08	P1,P2,P3,P4,P5,P6,P7,P8	CONN-TH_2P-P5.08	8
4	RASPBERRYPI-B+-GPIO	P10	2X20-SHROUDED	1
5	3k3	R1	R_AXIAL-0.4	1
6	10k	R2,R3,R4,R6,R7,R8	R_AXIAL-0.4	6
7	100k	R5,R9	R_AXIAL-0.4	2
8	ADS1115_ALIEXPRESS	U1,U2	ADS1115_MODULE_ALIEXPRESS	2
9	RS422_TTL_5V	U3,U4	HC_RS422_TTL_5V	2
10	POLOLU DUAL VNH5019 MOTOR DRIVER SHIELD	U5	DUAL VNH5019 MOTOR DRIVER SHIELD	1
11	UBLOX NEO M8N MODULE	U6	UBLOX NEO-M8N MODULE	1
12	4_RELAYS_MODULE with JD-VCC	U7	4 RELAY MODULE RELM-4	1
13	Logic_Level Bidirectional	U8,U9	LOGIC_LEVEL BIDIRECTIONAL	2