Author Topic: Product Design Help (AVR and Aurdino)  (Read 1823 times)

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Offline AsellithTopic starter

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Product Design Help (AVR and Aurdino)
« on: July 19, 2010, 05:06:47 PM »
I'm being asked by a company to help design a product to help us poor hobby guys. Schmart board wants to design an AVR capable board for US. The hobby robotics guys. They want it to support Arduino and the AVR chip sets. Their boards allow you to easily solder SMD components to boards. I want to help them make a board everyone here would be excited about and obviously buy. Picture this:

http://www.schmartboard.com/index.asp?page=products_dev&id=203

but for an AVR and it was arduino capable. Let me know what you all think and any ideas you have.
Jonathan Bowen
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Offline vinito

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Re: Product Design Help (AVR and Aurdino)
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2010, 05:50:29 PM »
The first thing that comes to mind for me is that I feel that all the surface-mount Arduino-like things that have come out (like Arduino pro, etc.) defeat the purpose a little. Once you have a micro soldered to a board (especially sm) then you lose the capability to easily slip the chip out and put it into a dedicated circuit you've grown in your own garden. In my mind, a dev board is what it says - for developing a project. Then when you're done you put the programmed chip into your finished product and slip a blank one back in.

So, for me I'd say that maybe what they could do is to install a socket on the dev board for the micro so it can be exchanged. Maybe sistered to that idea they could make something like a proto board with a few components attached to power it and break the legs out for soldering your circuit up (like a powered proto shield, or like the dev board minus the programming circuitry). That board would have their shmart board traces for easily soldering the micro in once it's programmed (the programming wouldn't be necessary anymore, but of course you could tweak it via ISP if desired). That would at least allow us to use the smaller form factor for developing and using in a project, while still providing some of the nice things a dev board is supposed to have.

Arduino-capable may mean you're limited to the few chips "sanctioned" by the Arduino court, or maybe they could pick whatever chip they want and make it compatible with a plugin - like the teensy, but with a non-proprietary bootloader of course. To me, any firmware or the like that's not open-source defeats the purpose of Arduino too, so that is just a no-no, unless they want to reduce sales. Anyway, just having a dev-board you have the pleasure of soldering your own smd chip in from a choice of three is just silly. To fit the shmart board niche, I'd say it ought to be a two-piece item - the dev board with a socket, and the "project boards" that contain the micro, power circuitry, and proto-board area for attaching your project components - maybe rather than perf-board style it could be more smd tracesand pads, maybe bridged from top to bottom, to enable a really small board for tidy projects.

And if it was cheaper than the other shmart board products for what it is, then they might even sell some. Shmart board stuff is kinda cool for an idea, but wow is it pricey for what it is. To me anyway.

$.02

Offline AsellithTopic starter

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Re: Product Design Help (AVR and Aurdino)
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2010, 07:16:56 PM »
The idea is to make a general AVR capable board that sanctioned or unsanctioned parts could fit into (arduino stuff) I think what we need to aim for is something that handles a package type QFN or TSSOP whatever works the best for the entire range of AVR parts. Then add the things EVERY project needs. Power supply. ISP port. headers for the various pins. They would work over a range of parts.

These would be the base you'd start with. Then on your board you make all the prototyping goodness and attach this to it with headers or cables. I'll have to read up on the shield designs but those might be incorporated as well. If they can be.
Jonathan Bowen
CorSec Engineering
www.corseceng.com

Offline Webbot

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Re: Product Design Help (AVR and Aurdino)
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2010, 08:02:40 PM »
These guys do dev boards: http://www.mikroe.com/eng/home/index/ for AVR, PIC etc etc if you want all the flexibility

Also RS Components went for the plug'n'play approach - but cant remember the name at the moment - nor the 'high' price.

I find it hard to get too excited about most of these things. If you want to 'play' then you normally only need a chip, a regulator, and a capacitor or two. Breadboards rock!!! Invest in a TQFP adapter socket for the bigger chips and/or even an expensive ZIF?

Part of the reason I don't get too excited is that each chip just has 'more of the same': more timers, more IO/ADC pins, more PWMs, etc etc.

The hard part is:
Quote
Then add the things EVERY project needs

How many I2C headers should you have, how may 3v3 headers for those sensors, how many SPI headers and how should they be isolated from the ISP, how many uarts should have onboard USB/Bluetooth etc etc.
Of course you could go mad and have an 8 foot square board bristling with nothing but headers.

IMHO once you get into the real unknown then use an existing dev board and then either build/buy a board that exposes the bits you need.
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