A Simple Method to Organize Your in Electronics Projects Using DIN Rail

Look around at your desk. If you are like me, there is at least one project that is "almost done." The project probably has a microcontroller and one or two breakout boards, a forest of wires (that make perfect sense to you) and a power supply or two. The project will live in this state of relative entropy until the code is finished, the printed circuit board is done, the PCB is done and revised to work like the prototype, you get around to building an enclosure......

As the world changed recently, a lot of you discover the joy and pain of working at home. You may have even had the joyous experience of "but dad, I really need a purple wire." The easiest place to get it was your desk. You were wondering why the prototype worked yesterday.

This Instructable is a collection of tricks and tips of how we have dealt with building microcontroller based projects at home over the last two years. It deals with an approach we adopted to make the most of limited space and doing rapid prototyping from home. We hope you find some of it useful.

Step 1: Containing the Mess - Mount Your Projects

One of the nicest developments in the last couple of years has been the rise of easy interconnect systems like SparkFuns QWIIC system. It allows development modules to be plugged together on an I2C bus. Adafruit has adopted this system. It has vastly simplified the speed and accuracy of connecting modules together. You can try out a half dozen diffrent sensors in an afternoon. It is great. It also leave these chains of development boards growing like creeping vines all over your desk,

So one of the first things we did was to create a way to mount the breakout boards. We jokingly call them quick sticks. The manufactures have gotten good at using standard dimensions for the development modules which make these board carriers possible. Here are the simples forms we created.

You will need access to a 3d printer to print them,

Sparkfun

Adafruit

Step 2: The Din Rail Option

We still had a problem. The project was still on the desk and split into a couple of parts. We solved this by mounting the components to a din rail. What is Din Rail? DIN rail is a mounting system that is usually used for industrial control system. It has a kind of cult following around engineers and makers, I mean there are toothbrush holders for Din Rail. It has been used instead of peg board to make tool holders on top of workbenches. It is also a great way to hang industrial circuit breakers for your project.

The project was now off the desk. (Ok, to be fair, not very far off the desk.) It could be moved as a single unit and taken off the desk, to be replaced with a another project, that needed some attention.

The modification that was needed was to make the quick stick Din Rail compatible. So a couple of minutes with Fusion 360 and we had:

SparkFun

Adafruit

The din rail frame we use for single projects can be found here. Thanks Fernando!

Step 3: The Point Where I Should Talk a Little More About Din Rail.

There are a lot of types of DIN rail. The one we use exclusively is, IEC/EN 60715 – 35 × 15. Specifically ASI PR006-1M Heavy Duty DIN Rail. To interpret a little, It is 15mm deep. It is made of steel, not aluminum. This makes it very rigid for this project.

This project can be done by using the 7.5mm aluminum version of din rail, but it has to be supported differently. You can cut a sheet of plywood to a convent size and support it with a wood frame to achieve the same result. (Maybe a different instuctable?)

The DIN rail can be cut with a hacksaw.

Step 4: The Project "Hi Rise"

Ok, so now we have a project on a DIN rail that we can move on and off a desk. But what if you work on more than one project at a time? What if you want to be able to try multiple versions of the same project? What if you have a dozen projects competing for your attention at the same time?

It is time to look at building a high rise. Using an open frame made of 8020 series 10, some 3d printed parts and some steel DIN rail you can construct a hi rise hotel for your projects. Wire them up and give each project its own rail. We typically use a usb hub to attach to Arduino and CircuitPython projects and an ethernet POE switch to talk to Raspberry Pi based projects.

The bracket

You will need to print brackets to attach the DIN Rail to an aluminum extrusion (such as 8020 series 19.) It can be found here:

Din Rail bracket for 8020 Series 10