This works really well, and there is no immediate need to replace this, however if there is interest, the following changes would be nice to have:
With the current pinout, we could support 1 arbitrator + 8 cards, so 9 slots in total
It would be nice to have a USB-C power connector with PD support directly, rather than needing a DC barrel jack or external module.
It could be nice to have a dedicated battery that could be shared with the entire board, providing 3.3v and potentially 5v rail power.
It would be nice to have slightly more spacing between at least some cards, to allow for things like stacked Featherwings
It could be nice to have some bus specific items provided by the board, such as:
Pull-ups on the GO lines
Pull-up on the CSn line
Dedicated SWD breakouts to avoid the need for a Debug Card
Optional but awesome: add a USB hub and DAPLink chips for each card directly, so all cards can be debugged directly through the main USB connection
At the moment, I am not ready to fund the first hardware spins of this, but if you would like to design one of these and would need financial assistance, please get in contact with me.
Currently, the Stargazer is using the RC2014 Backplane 8 as a backplane. I am using this backplane with the following pinout
This works really well, and there is no immediate need to replace this, however if there is interest, the following changes would be nice to have:
At the moment, I am not ready to fund the first hardware spins of this, but if you would like to design one of these and would need financial assistance, please get in contact with me.