PIndustrial - Power Supply + RS-485 HAT for Raspberry

There are a lot of Raspberry Pi-based projects, which have some power supply and external device connection issues. PIndustrial HAT was developed to make Raspberry Pi usage more convenient and to increase the whole system's reliability.

Issues

Generally, the Raspberry Pi-based automatization solutions consist of a bunch of IO modules with 12-24V power supply and RS-485 connected to a single-board computer.

It leads us to a few design issues: an additional power supply and RS-485 adapter with unreliable USB connectors have to be used. So, we end up with a messy connection scheme like this:

Solution

PIndustrial HAT for Raspberry Pi was designed to resolve all problems mentioned above and increase the whole system reliability.

• Power on without any additional power supply.
• RS-485 without any extra USB adapters.

By eliminating all unreliable wiring, we achieve a very clean connection scheme:

In this project an LMR23630-based DC-DC converter with up to 36V input range and 3A continuous output current is used.

For UART to RS-485 converter half-duplex MAX13487 transceiver with auto-direction feature was chosen. It allows eliminate RE/DE signal.

Also, there are 3 LEDs on a board:

• Power-On Indication
• TX/RX Activity

Technical Characteristics

• Input Voltage: 6...36V
• Output Voltage: 5V
• Output Current: 3A
• UART to RS-485 Converter
• Overvoltage Protection
• Reverse Polarity Protection
• Controlled Output: 5V
• Size: 56x21 mm
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi 2 or higher