AC Power Bar Circuit Boards

[Rob F]

Well I finally got the new power bars up and running, this board fits the US and AU outlets, I'll be getting a board for the universal soon. The board pictured above has changed, it was sad but the ULN2003 starting causing issues when all 8 channels were active, turned out the PCF8574A driving it didin't have enough power, unfortunately I missed this during testing before getting the boards so I had to wait for new boards again using different transistors. 

Happy to say it's working good now. The software was updated so it'll control 2 of these power bars, the boards has 3 dip switches the user can change to adjust the I2C address to match the power bar number in the software, there''s images on the board showing how to set the switches. Once I get the big software update finished 8 of these power bars can be connected. In the updated software when a addon is plugged in the controller will know what it is and prompt you.

Here's some pics, these boards didn't get the option to set an outlet to be locked on but can be easily done with a small mod if required. I can say they're wireless internally but not externally yet, hope to have if the next 6 months.

The next set of power bars will have a cosmetic change, I finally got the AC power socket I wanted which is a lower profile. It sits the same height as the outlets so it'll be mounted on the bottom of the board and the relays and AC/DC power module will also be on the bottom of the board, doing that I'll be able to drop the height about 15-20mm, I expect it to be about the thickness of the Gen3 controller.