It’s a project that’s been sitting around for 2 years, partly because I haven’t really needed it until more recently, and partly just doing other things. I wanted to design my own active bus board. While this could be used in nearly all my Eurorack cases. because it requires a bipolar 13.5-15V DC supply, I suspect it may be a solution for my own rack. However, I do plan on offering the bare PCBs and perhaps kits as well as releasing the schematics (probably under OSHW).
It only accepts bipolar DC input (not AC) as it’s meant to be used with an unregulated AC/DC supply (which is what I do) but seems to work with the common Meanwell -/+ 13.5VDC switching supply (which is what I’m testing with). This was for cost, simplicity, and to some degree safety. I didn’t want to sell PCBs or kits that work with mains voltage. Also to keep costs lower, it only supports -/+ 12VDC output (no +5VDC). I personally do not own a single module that runs off 5V bus power. I might design an add-on board that can plug into one of the headers to provide 5VDC for those rare cases. The design also uses non-adjustable 7812/7912 regulators. I found I haven’t really needed to adjust voltages in my current power solution and supporting that adds quite a few parts (and thus cost).
Point is, the design is meant to be good. Maybe not the best, but good. The design can support up to 1.5A (depending on the regulators used) but more realistically 1A as a practical max. My entire rack pulls around 1.8A off +12V in total. I plan on using six of these so each board would be handling somewhere around 300mA on average.
Not sure if this will be a product and, if so, whether just a PCB or kit but I’ll probably at least offer the spare PCBs up for sale as I’ll have to order more PCBs than I actually need. If interested in this, let us know! Knowing there is interest will help us decide if/how to offer these up for folks to buy.