PCB Rick Is No Pickle, But a DIN-Format 0-24V ESP8266-Powered Data Logging Board
The funniest thing some people are likely to have seen, this Rick and Morty-inspired PCB is a fully-functional 0-24V IoT data logger.
Pseudonymous maker "bryan6446" has built a data-logging PCB board, powered by an Espressif ESP8266, with a difference: It's PCB Rick, inspired by the animated series Rick and Morty.
"I'm a PCB, Morty," Bryan writes of the project. "[A] four channel 4-20mA logger made to fit in a DIN rail case. [It] Uploads data on Wi-Fi to a Thingsboard server which save the data and provides a user GUI for displaying data. I have eight v1 devices deployed [...] which were made in protoboard. My boss has seen the value in logging data and 4-20 was the most common signal I was logging, so I got these made for purpose-made boards."
The main feature of the board isn't its logging channels or the ESP8266 microcontroller which powers it, though: It's a familiar face found on the silkscreen layer. Inspired by an episode of Rick and Morty in which the titular Rick Sanchez, for reasons that appeared reasonable at the time, into Pickle Rick — a literal only-semi-ambulatory yet still-sentient dill pickle — Bryan has created PCB Rick.
"It's powered off the 24v sensor power," Bryan writes, "so other than the initial programming, I should not need to use the USB connector. [It] uses an ADS1115 ADC [Analog to Digital Converter] which uses I2C back to the microcontroller.
"Then on the right you see the input circuit, 2-40 signal come[s] in through A*2 and down to 0v though a precision 150 ohm resistor (R10); 10k ohm provides high input impedance to the chip so no nasties come back into the ADC and the diodes clamp the voltage to the power supply level again to try and protect the ADC."
More details on the project are available on Bryan's Reddit thread, but the design has not been shared publicly.
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