EGPIO

Hardware

The OVMS has 10 general purpose I/O ports, provided by a MAX7317 I/O expander.

The MAX7317 ports can be individually configured as either an open-drain output, or an overvoltage-protected Schmitt input. Being open-drain, you need to add pull-up resistors for input and output switch uses to get a defined high level (e.g. 10K to 3.3V). See the datasheet for details on maximum current & voltage ratings.

Depending on your hardware configuration, up to 4 ports may be used by the module. 6 are generally free to use.

Port Signal(s) Exp.Pin Default usage
0 MDM_EN 15 Modem enable
1 SW_CTL – Ext12V control (SW_12V)
2 CAN1_EN + EIO_1 17 CAN1 transceiver enable
3 MDM_DTR + EIO_2 19 Modem sleep control
4 EIO_3 21 -free-
5 EIO_4 20 -free-
6 EIO_5 18 -free-
7 EIO_6 16 -free-
8 EIO_7 14 -free-
9 EIO_8 12 -free-

SW_CTL (port 1) controls a BTS452R power switch, which could deliver a nominal output of 25W or 1.8A, and up to 40W or 2.9A short term at the SW_12V pin, but the main fuse of the module (located at the corner near the DB9 plug) limits the 12V current total sum of the board plus any external hardware to continuous 0.75A on a revision 3.1 board and 1.0A on a revision 3.2 board. The unswitched EXT_12V pin is also behind the fuse.

The module including modem needs a 12V current share of ~80mA in full operation. Calculate with 100mA to be on the safe side. That leaves continuous 0.65A on a revision 3.1 board and 0.9A on a revision 3.2 board for external devices and addons powered by the module. The fuse has a little headroom, but don’t rely on that.

SW_12V is meant to power auxiliary devices from the OVMS, for example head-up displays. Of course you can as well power a standard 12V automotive relay or fan directly from this without additional hardware.

The EGPIO (EIO) ports are not connected directly to the DA26 connector but are available at the internal expansion port. To route an EGPIO port to the DA26 connector, connect it to one of the GEP_1…7 lines at the expansion port, either directly or via some additional driver.

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Expansion Port (Prototype PCB)

../_images/da26-pinout.png

DA26 Connector

Example: to route EIO_8 (port 9) to GEP_7 (pin 21 on the DA26), set a jumper on pins 10+12 on the expansion port.

Commands

EGPIO control is provided by the egpio command set:

  • egpio output <port> <level> [<port> <level> …] – set output level(s)
  • egpio input <port> [<port> …] – query input level(s)
  • egpio status – show output, input & monitor status
  • egpio monitor <on|off> [ports] – enable/disable monitoring
  • egpio monitor status – show current monitoring status

To configure a port for input, it needs to be switched to output level high (1). That is done automatically by the input and monitor commands.

If you set multiple outputs, the ports will be set one at a time, so output levels will change with a slight delay. You can use this behaviour to set data lines before a clock line, e.g. when sending bits serially into a shift register.

Note

The MAX7317 needs active polling to detect input state changes. Monitoring is disabled by default, it can be enabled manually or configured to start automatically on module init. Without monitoring, only manual input queries will update the input state, trigger input events and input metric updates.

Configuration

Parameter Instance Description
auto egpio yes = Start monitoring on boot (default: no)
egpio monitor.ports List of ports to monitor by default (space separated)
egpio monitor.interval Polling interval in milliseconds (min 10, default 50)

The default interval of 50 ms (= 20 Hz) means an input signal needs to be at least 50 ms long to be detected. This polling frequency produces a CPU load of ~0.5% on core 1 and is normally sufficient to detect even very short button pushes.

Metrics

Metric name Example value Description
m.egpio.input 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9 EGPIO input port state (ports 0…9, present=high)
m.egpio.monitor 8,9 EGPIO input monitoring ports
m.egpio.output 4,5,6,7,9 EGPIO output port state

Hint: to process these metrics from Javascript, read them into an array using eval() and test for the presence of a port number using e.g. the includes() method in a browser plugin. Duktape does not support includes(), you can test indexOf(port) instead.

Example:

var input = eval(OvmsMetrics.AsJSON("m.egpio.input"));
if (input.indexOf(9) < 0)
  print("Input port 9 (EIO8) is currently low\n");

Events

Event Data Purpose
egpio.input.<port>.<state> – EGPIO input port change (port=0…9, state=high/low)
egpio.output.<port>.<state> – EGPIO output port change (port=0…9, state=high/low)

Hint: to listen to events from Javascript, bind to msg:event on a .receiver object from browser context or use PubSub from module context.

Example:

PubSub.subscribe("egpio.input.9.low", function(){
  print("Input port 9 (EIO8) is now low\n");
});