The surface mount PCB version of my RS-485 adapter recently arrived from overseas. This one is cheaper and cleaner using the 20-pin PIC18F14K50, mostly surface mount parts, and fewer LEDs. These require more patience to build than the through hole version.I like the expansion ports on this one. They are Arduino-esque, with power rails opposite data rails, allowing good stability of possible shield expandability. Every data pin, including the ones used for RS-485 are drawn out to pads.
Jumpers are provided to choose whether to connect the RS-485 read enable and drive enable lines from PORTB or PORTC. This allows for varied resource allocation depending on the other I/O used. If PORTC is completely free, it can be used as a full 8-bit I/O port. Otherwise SPI can be used.
The first board I built out has the headers, and a Beau Interconnect (now Molex) terminal block socket with detachable screw terminals socket. The second board built has dedicated screw terminals and no headers for a cleaner look.
If you look closely, you can see the green wire work done on the first board due to me stripping a pad of one of the capacitors while trying to replace an incorrect value capacitor. And I originally built the first one with a 4MHz crystal before reading the datasheet and realizing a 12MHz or 48MHz crystal are the only ones that work for USB with this cpu. I was able to remove the wrong crystal using two soldering irons, and then replaced it with the 12MHz crystal after another order from Digi-Key.
Next step is to load these with the Microchip USB HID bootloader, write up some documentation, and start selling some on eBay.
