RS422 / RS485 Feather Wing

The “shields” for the well-known Feather microcontroller boards from Adafruit and Sparkfun, which are available from various manufacturers and for a wide range of platforms, are known as FeatherWing:

•     RP2040
•     ESP32
•     ESP8266
•     Cortex M0
•     Cortex M4
•     SAMD51
•     STM32
•     nRF52840
•     and many more.

This FeatherWing provides an electrically isolated RS485 (half-duplex) and RS422 (full-duplex) interface for these microcontroller boards. Our wing is characterized by the following functions:

•     RS485 mode (half duplex)
•     RS422 mode (full duplex)
•     interface galvanically isolated from the microcontroller
•     enhanced ESD protection
•     Switchable automatic transmit and receive switching
•     Switchable software-controlled transmit and receive switching
•     switchable 4.7k pull-up, pull-down resistors (fail-safe biasing)
•     Switchable terminating resistor
•     Indicator LEDs for transmit and receive activity
•     Various functions configurable via DIP switches
•     Available with simple pin headers or stacked headers

  Why RS485? The RS485 interface is used in many areas of application:

•    MODBUS (industrial control and building management systems)
•    DMX (lighting technology)
•    NMEA0183 (maritime applications)
•    Access control
•    Pelco D (video surveillance)
•    and much more.

  Find out more about the function of the RS485 interface here.

We have provided various code examples in C++ and Python on Github. This code collection is constantly updated and expanded.