Hardware¶
MaD's electronics are open-source PCBs designed in KiCad,
under Hardware/. CI generates manufacturing files (Gerbers, BOM, interactive
BOM, 3D models) for each board.
EdgeBoard — main controller¶
The EdgeBoard is the heart of the machine. It hosts the Propeller 2 microcontroller, the servo/stepper driver interface, and all I/O: encoder, endstops, the door interlock and ESD safety chain, the SD card, and two host serial ports: the isolated control port J4 (through IC2 to P30/P32), which carries the protocol, and the Debug/Programming header J1 (P62/P63/RESn), which flashes the firmware and carries its debug log.
DS2 Addon — force-gauge interface¶
The DS2 Addon is a piggyback board for the DS2 force gauge. It conditions the strain-gauge bridge and provides the analog voltage that the firmware reads through the ADS122U04 ADC.
Manufacturing files¶
Each board's KiCad project is in its folder (Hardware/EdgeBoard/,
Hardware/DS2Addon/). To explore or modify a design, open the .kicad_pro in
KiCad. Production outputs are produced automatically by the
hardware CI job and published on hardware release
tags (hardware-v*).