It's been a while since I last posted a log, a lot has changed.

I've change the way that the backplane communicates to the main software. It now connects to a custom Pi-HAT that is basically just an arduino running custom controller software. A container runs on the raspberry pi that it sits on that talks via the dedicated ttyS0 serial port.

It passes through I2C to a custom 1 slot backplane unit. The 1 slot unit can be used as the first slot in the primary shack that runs the controller, or the last slot in any additional shacks that get chained on at the end.

This is the board, it has pins 5-13 broken out for other use, plus a small prototyping section. In case you would want to expand the functionality of the control software.

This is the first revision of the single slot backplane, it is picture with a USB hub onboard (unsoldered now), but this is being removed in revision 2 as it is not required. Revision 2 removed the requirement for the jumper leads and has i2c passthrough as a jumper only setting so it can be used either as a standalone final slot, or as the primary slot.

I also have new backplane boards with integrated USB hub and atmega328s onboard 3 slot backplane units.

I have been hard at work writing software and learning a new programming language (go lang) in the process.

I've started uploading a lot of the code into github (https://github.com/spacklerindustries) already. I'm containerising most of it and turning things into services.

spackler is the control software for interfacing with the controller-hat board that talks to the backplanes.

loomis is the serial console server that detects when a caddy is inserted with a USB serial device and will start shellinabox

bushwood is the over-arching software that can talk/listen to the other services

bakery is piaas which I discovered while researching something completely unrelated to raspberry pis, and replaces a bunch of ansible playbooks i originally was going to use. bakery will eventually transform into a new service called webb

To get started you need a single raspberry pi running bushwood and spackler.

Documentation will eventually make its way to https://docs.caddyshack.xyz/