Envox EEZ Bench Box 3
 | |
| Status | in progress |
|---|---|
| Source code | scpi-pps |
| Channels | 2 |
| Connectivity | SCPI over USB serial or TCP |
| Website | www.envox.hr/eez/eez-bench-box-3 |
The Envox EEZ Bench Box 3 (or "BB3") is an open hardware and open source platform design intended to support various modular test equipment modules, with an emphasis (at least, for now) on power supply use-cases.
At the time of writing, BB3 kits are [crowdfunding on Crowd Supply](https://www.crowdsupply.com/envox/eez-bb3) and are not yet available for direct purchase. However, the project website includes detailed information on the current prototype designs, with most of the components considered to be design-complete and ready for production.
Hardware
Due to being an open hardware design, there is comprehensive documentation of all of the hardware on project website.
The system is designed as a modular platform which can support a number of different components of different kinds. Each of the modules might present a different sort of functionality as far as Sigrok is concerned. However, the power supply components behave similarly to those in the BB3's predecessor, the EEZ H24005, and so the power supply functionality can share a common Sigrok driver as long as it's designed to dynamically configure itself based on the device capabilities.
With the available modules specified at the time of writing, up to six independently-controllable power supply channels are possible if all three of the module slots are populated with dual power supply modules.
Protocol
The EEZ BB3 has a SCPI-based protocol available either over USB Serial or over TCP/IP on the device's Ethernet port. The project website has a comprehensive guide to the SCPI implementation.
The SCPI protocol is compatible with that of the BB3's predecessor, the EEZ H24005, and so it's possible to share a protocol implementation across both platforms in the scpi-pps driver, as long as the implementation probes the device for how many channels it has and what their individual capabilities are.
There is an online simulator which allows exercising both the touch user interface and the SCPI port. The simulator is an emscripten build of a variant of the real system firmware, so its behavior is pretty realistic aside from (of course) having just a software model of the power supply module behavior.
Sigrok Support
User:Apparentlymart has proposed a patch series to support the EEZ PSUs as part of the existing scpi-pps driver, supporting both the BB3 as currently documented (tested via the simulator only) and the EEZ H24005.