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INA238: More than 16 INAs on a bus

Part Number: INA238
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TCA9548A, TCA9544A, INA239

Good day.

We want to put more than 16 INA238s on a PCB. Our current solution is to place down an FPGA that services two different I2C busses that contain the 16+ INA238s. Is there another way of having more than 16 INAs and being able to communicate with them over one RS485 channel?

  • Martin Babl,

    A solution for adding more INA238s could be made by implementing one of our I2C switches & multiplexers. The TCA9548A would offer the most amount of room to add INAs since it features eight channels and eight addresses. Which would be 16 INA238s per channel, equating 128 of them attached to the TCA9548A. This is depicted in the image attached to this reply. The TCA9544A is a similar device but has four channels and eight addresses. Other devices can be found at the link attached here.

    Another way to solve this problem is implementing an INA239. This device uses SPI communication. The communication method would allow as many INAs needed on the same line, but would use a chip select line to choose which one to read off of.