[Update: In the initial version of this post, Giant Board was wrongly attributed to Silicognition LLC (Patrick Van Oosterwijck). It was actually made by Groguard]
Silicognition LLC (Patrick Van Oosterwijck)’s PoE FeatherWing is an expansion board that adds PoE support to Adafruit Feather boards and can handle up to 4 Watts of power. The expansion board also comes with a built-in globally unique MAC address. It’s similar to the official Ethernet FeatherWing, but with the addition of PoE and a unique MAC address.
PoE FeatherWing key hardware features and specifications:
- WIZnet W5500 Ethernet controller up to ~13 Mbps
- Microchip 24AA02E48 2 Kbit serial EEPROM with built-in globally unique MAC address to avoid having to change and recompile the code for each device.
- Power
- Isolated IEEE 802.3at Class 1, Mode A and Mode B Power over Ethernet (PoE) with up to 4W of output power available via an RJ45 Ethernet port
- Output voltage – 4 to 5 V
- Dimensions – 55.9 x 22.9 mm (FeatherWing expansion board form factor)
Since the board re-uses the same WIZnet W5500 Ethernet controller, it is fully compatible with existing software written for the Adafruit Ethernet FeatherWing meaning it can easily be programmed with Arduino or CircuitPython using standard libraries.
While PoE FeatherWing should work with any/most Adafruit Feather boards, it may be easier to use with Giant Board thanks to a solder jumper that removes the need to add a fly wire for the IRQ. It’s not the first time Patrick has designed a tiny PoE board, so if the 13 Mbps bitrate is not suitable for your application, the earlier wESP32 board might be a suitable alternative (~90 Mbps), although you’d lose Feather compatibility.
The expansion board has just launched on Crowd Supply with a $3,000 funding target. Rewards start at $25 for Rev 2 boards and $29 for Rev 3 boards with free shipping to the US, and $10 to the rest of the world. Rev 2 and Rev 3 are pretty similar, and most people won’t notice the differences, but Rev 2 board is limited to 3W and has higher EMI. Backers of the Rev 2 board should get it in September, while people who backed the Rev 3 variant will have to wait until November.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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What does ‘ built-in globally unique MAC address’ mean? Normally, you’d have to assign an address and save it to the eeprom, and in this case the eeprom already has a value, but you can change it?
Reason I ask, is that I have a Netgear A6200 USB Network adapter, and in the device manager, I can change the “Locally Administered MAC Address” yet pinging it doesn’t work (ipconfig doesn’t show the new physical mac address I set).
I’m looking for a network card where I can truly change it’s MAC address!
Most cheap Chinese boards all use the same MAC address and it’s not even a proper MAC address, or doesn’t have one at all. So somehow this is a big deal with this thing, as the manufacturer didn’t cheap out, since there’s a tiny cost involved with registering a block of MAC addresses.