If I am starting my build today, what is the recommended sangaboard version?
I see 0.03 and 0.04 on kitspace and sangaboard-rp2040 on gitlab.
There is mention of issues with 0.04 here on the forum, but I don’t see if those have been worked out.
I will build my first OFM with the Nano and separate boards. Get all the 3D printing bits, nuts and bolts worked out.
I will probably end up building 3 OFM over the course of the next couple months for my daughter’s elementary school and it would be nice to have one neat control board to slap on the RPi.
I have a pick and place machine, and all the related support equipment so the actual building isn’t an issue. Part supplies seem OK right now for all the designs. So now I just need a recommendation on which one to build.
@mmca welcome.
The sangaboard v0.4 had issues that were never satisfactorily resolved so that is certainly not recommended. The sangaboard-rp2040 is still being actively developed. It is not a firm design yet but so far is looking very good. Maybe message @filip.ayazi for information on the best current rp2050 version. It will also need some tweaks in the Raspberry pi using the standard Raspbian Openflexure OS, to set the UART operational.
The sangaboard v5 will be available very soon, I’m aiming to send a batch into production next week if all goes well. If you have the equipment and want to make your own, the sangaboard-rp2040 repo has the latest dev version (and past beta versions, see the changelog there). The new firmware Filip Ayazi / sangaboard-firmware · GitLab supports most of the new features (fixed constant current driver support will be pushed in the next few days after a bit more testing).
As William said, there are some OpenFlexure Software changes required to get the hardware UART control working (nothing too complex but it’s not a works out-of-the-box experience yet). So if you’re not in a huge hurry I’d recommend waiting for the release version of the rp2040 based v0.5 which shouldn’t take long and hopefully, all the software compatibility issues can be resolved by the time that ships.
Thank you for submitting the v0.5 interest form, I’ll email you when the board is available. On the i2c passthrough, the board will have stackable pins on the raspberry pi header, so you can tap into raspberry pi’s i2c directly.