Base Scaffold Control Panel

The control panel is the electrical front door of the Base Scaffold System: it carries the scaffold's power and signal interface and provides the connect/disconnect that mates the scaffold to a workcell each time it docks.

It is a two-board pair that mate at a blade dock. One half stays with the workcell, the other rides on the base scaffold with the project.

Current revision: Control Panel: Workcell V2.1.0 and Control Panel: Scaffold V2.1.0. Every function on this page was exercised on the bench in the V2.1.0 test campaign; measured values are quoted where they matter.

Datasheet: Control Panel: Scaffold V2.1.0 — PDF · Markdown

The Pair

Workcell side

Scaffold side

Mated — how the pair comes together

The two halves mate coplanar at the blade dock, with the project's molecules, jumpers and wires dropping into place:

Block Diagrams

Input power

Four independent bench-supply inputs land on the workcell control panel. The user rails are individually metered at 20-bit precision with INA228; on the bench the meter reads within 0.04 % of a reference meter across 5–60 V and drifts under 0.2 % over a 20-minute, 10 A soak.

Input limits. PS2 and PS4 must not exceed 5.5 V; neither input tolerates more.

Isolation and ground scheme. Each user rail's return is isolated and may sit up to ±2.5 V from ground when its bond is removed. Large machine-pin jumpers on the scaffold bond a single return-to-ground per rail (default: bridged), so each rail's grounding is an explicit, per-project choice rather than a fixed assumption.

I/O available to the project

The user is given full control of the nested RP2350A, with 26 available I/O (RP2350A Mini) and USB 2.0 capable of dual data roles. Further, the workcell side of the control panel offers two USB 3.0 SuperSpeed host ports.

Wireless. AX210-class module provides Wi-Fi 6E across all three bands (2.4 / 5 / 6 GHz) with 160 MHz channel width and 2×2 MIMO for link rates to ~2.4 Gbps, plus Bluetooth 5.3. Wi-Fi runs on PCIe and Bluetooth on USB. Measured on the bench: 636 / 815 Mbit/s over 6 GHz.

Sensing. The panel carries on-board environmental sensing (temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure and air quality) and 6-axis motion sensing (3-axis accelerometer + 3-axis gyroscope), both available to the project through the Control Panel Dashboard. A digital microphone is also fitted for acoustic capture.

User MCU I/O

26 user I/O reach the machine-contact field at 3.3 V logic (−0.3 to 3.6 V absolute, 12 mA per pin). Every line supports digital input/output, PWM and the MCU's programmable I/O; four are additionally analog-capable. All 26 lines were verified toggling at 250 kHz, full swing.

USB

USB behavior. In host role the board sources VBUS from the switched 5 V (PS2) rail through a protected path; a latching eFuse turns the port off on overload until it is reset. In device role (for example, plugged into a PC) VBUS sourcing is off and back-feed into the supply is blocked — 0 V measured at the PS2 contacts with a PC attached. If VBUS is broken out through machine pins and CC termination is not satisfied, the CC jumper must be placed.

Debug and control across the dock

The dock carries the facilities needed to program and control the project's MCU without opening anything up: SWD and UART debug, plus boot and reset control of the user MCU, and low-voltage service rails. Bench results: SWD clean to 31 MHz, UART to 3 Mbaud, and boot/reset control 20 of 20 cycles. An ID EEPROM with a factory 128-bit serial number tells the workcell which scaffold is docked. A companion dashboard application provides live control and telemetry — meter the rails, set PS1 like a bench supply, switch rails, drive the scaffold I/O, and program the user MCU.

Machine contacts

Project connections land on the scaffold's machine-contact field. Two contact classes are used; both are solderless press-fit receptacles that accept a machine pin tail, a machine needle, or a bare solid-core wire.

Both ratings are contact-limited — the mating pin can carry more, so the contact sets the figure — and are quoted at 80 % derating for margin.

Contact field map

The scaffold carries 63 machine contacts.

Environmental

The base scaffold and its control panel operate in a controlled 20 – 25 °C environment. The workcell electronics are rated −20 to +70 °C.

On-board sensing spans a considerably wider envelope:

Relationship to the Rest of the System

• The electrical boundary sits at the dock: everything upstream — bench inputs, metering and the workcell controller — is the workcell half. Everything the project touches — rails at the machine contacts, user I/O, USB and ground bonding — is the scaffold half.
• Wiring from the panels to the control panel is bent automatically; gauges and termination are documented in the Base Scaffold System — Wiring section (James/Luke).
• The project's connections terminate on the machine-contact field exactly like every other contact on the scaffold.

Datasheet

Control Panel: Scaffold V2.1.0 datasheet: PDF · Markdown