There are some $$expensive power distribution solutions available in the market (eg. Racepak smartwire, motec PDM etc.) To my knowledge, there are no standalone ecu's that provide the ability to control an io mux module directly.
Is it possible to use the genboard with DS2480B to control one (or more) DS2408 chips mounted on a remote board (separate enclosure?) This remote board could serve as an i/o extender for the genboard and also have power transistors controlled by the DS2408(s) serving to power things like headlamps, turn signal lamps, radiator fan etc.
Obviously there would be firmware changes required to control the DS2408's. Is this feasible as a development project?
Like outputting a certain XX YY ZZ <NN> CRC (...whatever) sequence on 2nd serial port when output_channel= ... range is configured
- maybe you already have a sequence in mind ?
- actually VEMS round is already configurable as IO-extender, PWM output
- of course feasible, but one-wire might not be the best solution for this
- RS485 is more noise-tolerant than CAN (which can be seen from the higher range: RS485 upto 1200m) and throughput definitely high enough for IO-extender
- there are even well-established modbus-commands for this (even v3 firmware implements some, though not yet advertised)
- RS485 can be the v3 2nd-UART; or to the 1st UART, but than v3 must be master and query every peer (including VemsTune, which must act as slave than !)
- SPI is another option (SD-card with IO-extender)
- in any case, the error-handling should be well established (no response for a certain time, what to do...), and mission-critical components should be "local" if possible