Duet 2 Wifi Expansion board IO usage

jakemestre

I'm using a duet wifi with the signal expansion board. I've got 10 motors to drive and 5 of which are external close loop steppers.
I'm out of IO to control heaters, fans, air scrubber, led's and a couple other things so I'm curious which of the signals say heater 5-7 could be used to control things. Does that ribbon cable make use of all those signals for the external drives or can the cable be rewired to make use of plugged up signal? Or is there another board that somebody's working on to control 6 external drivers? Something like the Duex5 but for external drives?

dc42

@jakemestre, we're planning to release a DueX0 board, which will be like a DueX5 but with 5 outputs for external stepper drivers.

In the meantime, heater signals 3 and 4 are used on the expansion breakout board to drive the servo connectors (which I presume you are already using), but heaters 5-7 are unused. So you could tap into them. Another possibility is to connect a SX1509B based expansion board (available form Adafruit and Sparkfun) to the I2C signals.

jakemestre

Thanks David!
Where do I sign up to be on that beta?!? In the mean time, do you happen to have a diagram of which wires on the ribbon are which signals?

dc42

See the schematic at https://github.com/T3P3/Duet/blob/master/Duet2/Duet2v1.04/DuetWifi_Schematic_v1.04.pdf.

jakemestre

@dc42 The more I look at the schematics and work with the boards I realize that you're a badass wizard.

Sphyloid

@dc42 Are you still planning on releasing the Duex0? Im considering engineering something similar, doing a really nice job of it and possibly selling them. However if you are planning on releasing something like that, I might buy them outright if they are reasonably priced.

Likewise if you have found that there is no market for such a product, I would treat that as an excellent indicator that it would be a waste of time.

Phaedrux

@sphyloid I doubt that we will do a DueX0 now that Duet 3 a 3 Mini are available. There will be a Duet 3 main board with external driver outputs instead of internal drivers.

Sphyloid

@phaedrux Perhaps this is worth promoting to its own thread. Ill make one real quick.

droftarts

@sphyloid There's the Duet Expansion Breakout Board: https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_Expansion_Breakout_Board
Or did you want that, but with all the features of the Duex?

Ian