This circuit board represents a childhood dream coming true for me, as I have always been fascinated by electronics and the computerized control of devices. Perhaps it should not be surprising then, that the first PCB I designed, populated, troubleshooted, and then tested is one which accomplishes that very thing.
The concept of controlling devices from a computer is certainly not new. In many aspects, this project itself is not special at all. The Venturii VDAC-16KD is a 16-Channel Relay Driver board, that essentially allows one to power up to 16 x 12VDC outboard relays and control them using Venturii. This device talks over RS-485, allowing it to be up to 4000 feet from the computer or a serial to IP converter, but future devices will have such a device built in and will talk to an IP network directly. In many ways, this project has been a “proof of concept”, as well as a learning experience with several mistakes made and learned from along the way. Rev 02 of this board will include a reset button, the Status LED replaced with Tx and Rx LEDs, an ICSP header, test pins, TTL breakout pins, and quite possible a few other enhancements. All that aside, it is working now and very well, and will become an integral part of my house’s automation and specifically, it’s whole home audio distribution system, controlling 4P/DT relays which will connect / disconnects sets of speakers from various rooms & places around the house. It is very exciting to see this project take shape as it branches out into the realm of hardware.
Venturii is an open source automation, integration and data normalization platform – all it’s software and hardware is open source including the this relay driver. This board so far has been created using Fritzing, an open sourced PCB development platform. Based on the Atmega 328P microprocessor, this license enables anyone with the appropriate skill, time and inclination, to modify the software running on this device to whatever need they have for it – and they are free to do so under the terms of the GPL v2 or later license so long as they also make their modifications open source and under the same terms and conditions. If you would like to get involved with Venturii or to try it out for yourself, leave a comment or send me an email.