I love the idea of an industrial spec IoT communications system for controlling parts of the machine. Reducing wiring to com+power is really attractive, especially after I spent the weekend building out a 38 wire harness to my experimental machine. Just the cost reduction in wire, connectors, cable management, etc.. make this very worth it.
My problem is finding hardware for the random IO bits I want to add. I have some tool boards on order but those are very specific. Regrettably, there isn't a very good ecosystem of inexpensive CAN-FD transceiver boards out there.
I am looking for something that is a simple, inexpensive CAN-FD transceiver that can be paired with a small SoC like an ESP32, Arduino or whatever. Better yet, a board that has the two integrated together on a small package with a nice array of IO pins and maybe some ADC.
This would be used for specialty sensors or possibly even motor control systems. I have a new filament module that I am working on that measures filament availability, tension and movement rate. It would be good to have a way to communicate this over the CAN-FD bus.
Does Duet have any plans for something like this? Is there a suggested 3rd party board we can use? I feel we have a great technology to play with but we are crippled by a lack of ways to use it.