Dream protoboard? (not breadboard, the kind you solder to)

I got some of the first set last week - thanks! I've been a bit too busy to reply properly though!

They look great - only thing I'd say is maybe add some descriptive silkscreen markings for what each outline is? Especially for stuff like the voltage regulator. It's pretty obvious anyway, but the silkscreen is basically unused at the moment (maybe the boards can be made cheaper without one though).

And is that a LiPo charger outline, or just another 5 pin SMD voltage regulator? I guess you might just about be able to get an SMD 2 pin JST connector in there near it, in case anyone has any LiPos with that connector on?

Cool, glad hear you've gotten them :) I did make some improvements to the silk screen. Though I didn't label the regulators.

That's just a normal 5 pin regulator. You could of course put a sot-23 charger onto the pads for that near the top.

I'll have my next version when I get back on Sunday, or I should (should be coming today, but not going home after work). Then I'll find out if my silk screen came out - I need to figure out how to do silk on bottom. On top I use tsilk layer, but there's no bsilk layer in eagle.

Do watch out for the power traces -on one of yours I cut them apart, ppb the other, the place to cut is marked, but not cut. Could get a nasty surprise if you tried to use the uncut one without noticing that

but there's no bsilk layer in eagle.

I use bNames/tNames. It doesn't really matter, because when you run it through the CAM Processor you just go to the relevant silkscreen tab and select the layers you want in it.

Thanks for the note about the trace - I noticed it was cut on one, but didn't check the other... I've just done it :)

Aaah - when I do the protoboard, I turn off tNames/bNames when I make the gerbers >.>

Some sample populating information helps with the confidents to stay on the cool - no chip frying - side... ;-) --- Thanks, had a blast spending time with you on our beloved Espruino subject - especially on such short notice!

New boards are in....

Aaand I forgot a trace on one of the TSSOP outlines. Unfortunately, I bought 2 designs with the same mistake. 20 junk boards :-(

These look OK so far though:

ouch!

Still very much usable, but it's not really saleable, and I'd been hoping to put a few up on ebay or tindie to see how they sell. It only impacts the TSSOP-28 area further from the edge (you can see the missing trace in the picture above), and it can still be used for smaller parts, or for SOIC parts.

Also, I need to modify the MSOP area so that you can use a DFN part on it; I think the spacing is right, or close enough that I could do what I did for 5050 LED / SOT-23-6

I think I want to thin the "line" in the solder mask over the exposed Vcc traces, so they have a bit of mask on the edges, so you can clearly see which trace is Vcc

Need to do bottom silk screen too, as noted previously.

I really like the yellow solder mask - you can see the traces so clearly.

Also - the test results of making thin easily bridgable pads - no luck. To make them bridge, you just have to pile on solder, even if there's no mask between them. At least that settles the question.

Wow, those look nice. To be honest you could still sell them as long as you make it obvious there's one trace missing. Most developers wouldn't mind :)

With the snap-off ones, that's an Arduino Mini outline? Can it still work with the Pico?

Also, how did you get the routing done? Was it just lines in the 'outline' layer? I really want to make a collection of Pico Shims that can be snapped out, so it'd be really handy to know.

Yeah - I might end up doing that.

The boards are:

Yellow: Espruino Pico, with the layout we've talked about here. Obviously, this is the one I've talked most about here, since it's the only one directly relevant to Espruino.

Green: Arduino Pro Mini, otherwise exact same layout. Alternately, could easily fit a '1284p or other DIP microcontroller up to DIP-40.

Red:

5 x 10 cm general purpose, nothing that specifically caters to any MCU.
5x5cm ATTiny84/841 SOIC-14
5x5cm ATTiny85, with either SOIC or DIP package.

I think I figured out a way to get a better mounting hole on the large layout board.

I got slits cut in the board by drawing on the milling layer some 0.05" lines, with gaps for the ratbites. No need to use board outline layer (when I did that, the solder mask didn't come quite up to the edge; without it it came out fine with solder mask going to the milled edge.) I haven't tried seeing if this can get me castellated pads. Shoulda attempted it on my test board this batch.

I've already got something halfway done with an '85 board that will listen on 433mhz to see when door to the bathroom has been closed, and if the lights are off in the room, it will turn on a deep red LED (to not impede my getting back to sleep - studies have shown horrible things about blue light and sleep) trained on the floor near the bed for a few seconds, to help me find my way back. The same board (with a switch, ofc) will be used to control a white light on some nearby shelves too

REV B: Will be sent out shortly for fabrication - please to give comments and point out flaws with haste :-)

Key features:

Both sides now have lables for the pins. Packages are marked. Traces for TSSOPs are not missing.
SOT-89 area is labled as such.
Better labeling of power and ground traces
The exposed power trace now has the solder mask covering the edges, to remind you that it's a power trace.
New mounting hole near top left, as that side previously didn't have enough mounting holes, so if you put a leg in each hole, it'd fall over. Now it won't.
The MSOP/DFN area now actually can accept DFN. The most interesting ones are the TCS3*** color sensors which are only available in DFN-6 (except for one awful one in SOIC-8, that outputs in frequency :-( - where's the fun in that?!)

Looks very nice! My slight OCD triggers a bit on your inconsistency between GND and Gnd though ;)

Got it - I'll see if I can fix those. Anyone else?

There are only a couple of places where it's GND instead of Gnd, but it is kinda ugly.

A couple of other things I noticed - SC-70 (a readful slightly-smaller-than-SOT-23 package) should also work in the MSOP area.

Also - a couple of thoughts on things to put on them... My night-guidance light used one of the little ones (with an attiny85) and it made the hardware go together really easy. It uses an AOZ1282 buck converter in the SOT-23-6 area, which worked without issues. The same spot could also be used for a boost converter, or a switched capacitor voltage doubler (they make ones that regulate to 5v - they're not cheap, but they get you 5v from 3.3v with just the chip and 3 caps - input, output, and flying, (and you'd need one of those caps anyway), at like 100mA of current.

Got the new batch in, and they look AWESOME

Going to be setting up on Tindie this weekend, I guess - I also got a batch of T1634 breakouts that I'll be selling along with my T841 ones (who knows which will and won't sell).

beau·ti·ful - just like (or even more than) a painting...

They look great! Let me know when they're up on Tindie and I'll stick something in 'News' and tweet about it.

Awesome! Thanks @Gordon :-)

@DrAzzy, did you know about this Tiny84a/44a/24a board?

I followed your 841 RF gateway. Really cool. I wonder about the closeness of the antennas... may be moving one board - transmitter or receiver - with an 'extension cord' a bit away, you may get more stable results.

Btw, the url on the board is it now active?

Nope, URLs aren't active yet.

I haven't seen the seller for those boards, but i'd seen pictures of them.

I actually have plans to sell a similar board, but with no button (who the hell actually uses those reset buttons that people obsessively put onto AVR boards?), and all the parts on one side so you can reflow it. If he's getting that price for his boards, that bodes well for me though :-P (plus, my t841 boards will offer something extra - they'll have the 6-pin serial header so you can program them with bootloader, just like a normal Arduino board)

They dont seem to care that TX and RX are so close - ofc, it can't use both at once, but putting them far apart wouldn't help that; it'd still swamp out whatever signal there was.

I've put it up for sale on Tindie...

https://www.tindie.com/stores/DrAzzy/

Still awaiting admin approval on the listings, ofc. Presently, I don't have a good way of doing international shipping - There's gotta be a way to ship a single bare board like it was a letter - it's under the weight and thickness limits and all, and until I can do that, I can't ship internationally for a sane price.

I don't know how it works in the US, but in the UK we have various sizes and price bands - sizes are here

If you can fit within them then there's no problem - just stick the right postage on it and you're sorted?

OSHPark sends internationally in all-plastic padded bags (probably the same thing they send across the US in). I've never had any problems with the stuff when it's arrived.

They've been Admin-Approved (except for one, which mysteriously hasn't gotten the approval yet. They dribble out the approvals too)

I've still not yet worked out international shipping, but I've got domestic shipping sorted, I think. I also realized I need some decent envelopes.

International shipping is sorted out now.

I've got some more cool stuff going up on there friday assuming the approval gods work with haste - MOSFET breakout boards loaded with logic level FETs, capacitive proximity sensors.

Ohh, those sound good. For the Pico, or general purpose?

They're general purpose - but obviously, MOSFETs that work with 2.5v Vgs are a lot more useful for 3.3v microcontrollers than 5v ones.

I've got SOT-23 MOSFET breakouts (about the size of a TO-22o package), and a larger 4-channel one with 20A mosfets on it.

The touch/proximity sensor is an MTCH101 based device, real simple, and you can use whatever you want as the sensor, as long as it's metal. Wires, screen, foil, coke cans... It's open drain output, and has a pullup resistor on board.