GPIO and mirkoBUS adapters for Ten64

Ten64 Forum
1

Hi all,

Some of you have expressed interest in using the GPIO’s on the board but in a more convenient way than the small pitch IDC/ribbon cable.

Luckily I have managed to find a solution to this! I found a connector series (Samtec FLE) which is “compatible” with the connector on the Ten64 board, which is usually meant only for IDC/ribbon cables.

gpio-board-underside

When you only need to access some of the GPIO lines this is definitely more convenient. BUT this is a bit of a hack so it’s not suited to serious production applications. You have to be very careful that you align the connector perfectly, as the plugin board connector doesn’t have the mechanical key and shoruding that the mainboard has.

We are considering changing the GPIO header type and/or adding separate breakouts for certain lines (e.g I2C) in future Ten64 revisions.

GPIO breakout

Ten64 GPIO breakout board
Ten64 GPIO breakout board706×353 89.1 KB

This little board splits the 26-pin connector into two rows of “standard” 2.54mm/0.1" pitch pins.

mikroBUS adapter
Mikro_16

This allows certain mikroBUS “click” boards to be used with the Ten64 (generally those using I2C, UART and GPIOs only, and SPI via bitbang in some cases).

How do I get one of these?

These are not Traverse products. I designed these in my own time. All faults with them are mine

Unless you are in Australia it’s not worth trying to sell/send one to you, but these boards are relatively easy to assemble. So I have shared them on PCBWay. You can add it into your cart and they will fabricate the PCBs for you on demand:

The Altium design files and more information can be found here:

Software support

The current Ten64 firmware doesn’t support device tree overlays, meaning you will need to edit and reflash the system device tree to describe any hardware you plug in (especially for I2C and SPI). This is definitely something that will be added in the “1.0” firmware.

Happy Hacking!

(And be careful, the GPIOs are connected directly to the LS1088 and may not be forgiving as many microcontroller boards to accidents)

2

Another option to get the control header and jtag out to something more prototyping-friendly is idc ribbon cables and these adapters, 1.27mm male headers to DIP
2x5 https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/chip-quik-inc/DR127D254P10M/5978225
2x10 https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/chip-quik-inc/DR127D254P20M/5978257
there’s a 2x20, which’d be better for the control header but no stock, so I just lost the last few GPIOs and grounds.
(the same caveat about orientation applies, particularly with the incompletely-connected control header cable)

3

I find terminal blocks more practical.

Bulti-in into a case: https://www.czh-labs.com/czh-labs-rpi-screw-terminal-block-breakout-module-with-aluminum-enclosure-for-raspberry-pi-1-2-3-model-b-b-p1249.html

Or to be connected via ribbon cable, similar to: DIN Rail 2×20 IDC to Terminal Block Adapter Breakout | Raspberry Pi в Киеве (Украина)

4

I’m about to order some fully-assembled GPIO breakout boards from PCBway, and as usual with them I’ll be getting more than I need. I’m on the east coast of the US so if you have any interest in getting 1-3 of these breakout boards DM me.

5

A note of caution for the GPIO breakout adapter:

  • The pins labeled “UART1” on the adapter are /dev/ttyS0 in Linux (and labeled CONSOLE on the ‘Control/Hacker Header’ documentation page).
  • The pins labeled “UART0” on the adapter are /dev/ttyS1 in Linux (and labeled UART2 on the ‘Control/Hacker Header’ documentation page).

When I tried to setup my second system I couldn’t get the serial data flowing properly, and it was because I’d connected to “UART1” expecting that to also be /dev/ttyS1. It’s not :slight_smile: