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I2C interface to industrial digital I/O boards

Connecting I2C I/O chips to an industrial standard I/O connector

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My STEbus system has parallel digital I/O boards (based on the 8255) that can connect to signal conditioning boards that provide opto-isolated I/O, relays, etc.
The common PC does not have such I/O directly, but it should be possible to provide it indirectly via USB to I2C digital I/O chips.
The 50-way connector pinout was defined by Arcom and widely adopted in the 1980s.

Basically all I need to do is put two I2C/SPI-to-parallel-I/O chips onto a board and wire them to a 50-way connector, then add some 5V and 12V power rails.

It can then be used as an I2C/SPI peripheral straight away.

The UMFT4222EV is a USB to I2C module which allows a PC with a USB port to access the I2C bus.

Copies of catalogue pages show the wide range of signal conditioner boards that were made.

  • Opto-22 Connector Pinout

    Keith01/01/2024 at 13:58 0 comments

    This was defined by Opto-22, an American company who specialised in producing opto-isolated industrial I/O.

    Between each signal wire is a ground wire to prevent cross-talk.

    My only grumble is that the channel numbering starts from pin 47 and works backware to pin 1. If they had made pin 1 as 5V  then the channels would have incremented nicely into wider cables. But it is too late to change now... 

    It was such a common standard that Arcom created an adapter board. This routed their four channels to two Opto-22 connectors.

  • Circuit

    Keith12/31/2023 at 21:45 0 comments

    This is the proposed circuit. The two I2C to digital I/O chips are connected in their normal fashion, and the I/O pins connect to the Arcom I/O connector pins coloured in the diagram below. Mostly a join-the-dots exercise.

     I think the only "loose ends" are the interrupt signals, if used.

    Most signal conditioner boards will assume they can take a fair amount of current from the +5, +12 and -12 volt pins, but of course the I2C master may not be able to supply that. More thought will be required to solve that issue. 

  • Design

    Keith12/30/2023 at 19:18 0 comments

    Should be pretty simple, I2C/SPI wires in and the parallel I/O pins simply routed to a 50-way connector.

    Pinout shall follow this standard, with the first device driving groups 0 and 1, the second device driving groups 2 and 3.

    I shall omit:

    • group 4
    • special function pins
    • -12V

    But I will need:

    • +12V if I want to drive my SCB11 relay board
    • +5V for most signal conditioner boards

    This will be a current supply problem because a USB-to-I2C/SPI board does not supply +12V at all, and the +5V rail does not have a lot of current available - I would guess 100mA or so. The LED32 indicator board will need about 400mA just to power all the LEDs on.

    Some external power supply will thus be needed.

  • SCB18 32-channel opto-isolated inputs

    Keith12/30/2023 at 18:23 0 comments

    The SCB18 provides 32 channels of opto-isolation for DC inputs, with input voltage range to the board -between 3V and 50V - being user-selectable by the inclusion of a series resistor. The board can be configured by switches to be active-high or active-low.

    Isolation Voltage		Instantaneous Surge	Working
    Input to Output Isolation	700V DC			350V DC
    Channel to Channel Isolation	700V DC			350V DC

    Each channel has a 270R resistor limiting the LED current, and the phototransistor collectors are pulled up by 4k7 resistor packs:

  • SCB11 eight-channel SPDT relay output board

    Keith12/30/2023 at 18:14 0 comments

    The SCB11 provides eight channels of relay outputs. Each channel is rated at 240V AC 5A by using high quality relays. Normally-open and normally-closed change-over contacts for each channel are available; on-board LEDs show which relays are active, and links select which I/O lines are used from the 50-way industry standard I/O connector, allowing up to four SCB11s to be 'daisy-chained' on the same ribbon cable.

    It has an alternative, much smaller connector which carries the 8 control signals plus 0V and 5V.

    It is a very simple board, just a ULN2803 Darlington driver switching some relays.

  • LED32 front panel indicator

    Keith12/30/2023 at 18:05 0 comments

    This will be very useful, showing the signal activity.

    The LEDs can be lit when signals are high or low, in groups of eight.

    Those chips are 74LS86 XOR gates.

  • Signal Conditioning Board catalogue pages

    Keith12/30/2023 at 17:52 0 comments

    Here are catalogue pages for the some of the many signal conditioning boards that were made.

    Arcom originally designed a 50-way connector pinout, but another company made a 60-way superset which they named the Signal Processing bus.

    If designing new boards, I would use the 60-way connector because has an even number of pins either side of the board centre line. If using the 50-way connector, place it sits in the subset of the 60-way connector. This will not be symmetrical about the centre line, but that helps keep cabling between the two types free of bends.

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