This was an early attempt at implementing a Raspberry Pi cluster with eurocard backplane.
The design loosely mimics the Meiko CS/2 management network design, implementing a CAN bus network for
- Remote Power/Reset
- Remote Serial console
- Remote Power (watts) monitoring
- Remote Beacon LED
The prototype is a 3U eurocard with the Pi 3 on standoffs, and some other hardware including a teensy3.2 as a management controller. The teensy is attached to the local (L-CAN) CAN bus via a MCP2551 CAN transceiver. The teensy can
- pull down the Pi reset line with one of its GPIO's
- hard/soft power control
- flash a beacon LED to identify a board that needs service
- read/write the Pi console serial port and buffer 32K of history
- monitor Pi external current draw
- read L-CAN address from DIP switch
- read X-CAN address from DIN backplane.
- answer CAN queries
The Pi itself also gets a L-CAN interface through a MCP2515 SPI CAN controller and reads the L-CAN and X-CAN addresses via GPIO.
The Eurocard plugs into a DIN backplane which supplies power and interconnects L-CAN endpoints.