I’m very pleased to introduce the – Fresh! – Updated! – New! – JeeNode version 5 board:

Hold on. Don’t get too excited. It’s not that big a deal. It’s basically still the same JeeNode v4, with just some incremental changes.

Allow me go through each of the differences in some detail:

• on the left, there is now a diode between the FTDI power input and the rest of the PWR lines – so you can power the board from a 4.5..13V battery, etc. and it won’t fry the FTDI board or cable when plugged in
• this also means that “PWR” will be about 0.7V lower on the PWR pins in several places across the board, than on the power supplied to the FTDI power pin (i.e. 4.3V when fed from a USB-BUB)
• for 100% compatibility with the JeeNode v4 and older, the diode can be disabled (i.e. shorted out) with a solder jumper on the back side
• two extra header pins have been added (+3V and RST), on either side of what was the “PWR/SER/I2C” header on the JeeNode v4 – it is now called the “PSIX” header (X = eXtended)
• on the right, the RFM12B module was moved a bit to make room for a hole for the antenna wire
• not as easy to see, but the board is also fractionally longer, so that the RFM12B no longer sticks out
• slight re-arrangement of components (caps and reset pull-up)
• most holes are slightly larger, making it easier to unsolder components, if you ever need to
• the long sides of the board are now routed i.s.o. V-scored, i.e. much smoother and more precise:

That’s more or less it. Oh, and D O T S … four big white dots on each side of the board to be precise, next to the PWR pin of each of the Port 1 .. 4 headers. You’ll be surprised by how convenient that can be when hooking up all sorts of plugs – which have the same dots to mark the proper orientation.

All in all, no big changes. Nothing incompatible with the JeeNode v4, the JeeNode USB, or the JeeNode SMD. This isn’t about planned obsolescence, these are just some tweaks to squeeze the maximum usability out of what is essentially the flagship and workhorse of Jee Labs, if you pardon this odd mix of metaphors.

I did forget to fix two little teeny tiny label name spelling errors which were also on the JeeNode v4 (left as exercise for the diligent reader). Oh well. I hereby claim victory anyway, and now declare this v5 PCB to be TUJ!

… TUJ ?

Yes: TUJ. Shorthand for The Ultimate JeeNode of course! What else?

PS. The JeeNode v5 is shipping now. I don’t play “There’s Something New Coming Soon” games.

Update – I’ve updated the documentation:

• JeeNode v5 manual (PDF)
• JeeNode v5 pinout (PDF)

It’s all a bit in transition, with the Café moving to Redmine soon – which is where these docs will go, eventually.