Machinecollective.org » protomodules http://www.machinecollective.org Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:20:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 en hourly 1 Prototyping PCB for use inside modules http://www.machinecollective.org/posts/2008/09/04/prototyping-pcb-for-use-inside-modules/ http://www.machinecollective.org/posts/2008/09/04/prototyping-pcb-for-use-inside-modules/#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:22:48 +0000 admin http://www.machinecollective.nl/?p=12 Today I finished my first printed circuit board design, it’s a prototyping PCB for use inside the prototyping modules. It will allow users to quickly add shift registers, (de)multiplexers and other components to the modules. The circuit has room for 4 x 26 pin headers or IDC connectors to easily connect wires or flatcable for the DB25 connectors. Every pin of the dual row IDC header is routed to a 21 pin single row header and 2 x 6 pads for V++ and GND connections. There is enough space to place up to four 20 pins IC’s and I added a bunch of pre-connected pads and rows so common connections between components can be made quickly.

The design is based on the idea that every Arduino pin can be mapped to a DB25 connector (which are used to attach the modules together). Users can selectively hook up a couple of wires to the Proto-PCB, depending on the functionality of that particular module. I’m currently working on documentation and drawings that explain a bit more about connecting the modules together, more on that subject soon…

I’m learning how to work with KiCad PCB suite, an open source EDA application. Designing this Proto-PCB was a nice exercise to learn KiCad’s common functions and the software to design the circuits: PCBNew. All KiCad files will be released under an open source licence as soon as I have verified the finished PCB’s.

I posted a .zip file with all board-layers as PNG to the forum. Courtesy of Circuitpeople.com, an online service to view and share your Gerber files. I used these PNG’s to create the preview image shown above. Let me know if you miss important features…

proto-pcb-layered-big

Prototyping PCB layers

3D views of prototyping PCB

3D views of prototyping PCB
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