Beginner wants to make expansion board

Hi beagleboard community,

for several couple of months I’ve been doing some small extension boards to beagleboad for my robot project http://veter-project.blogspot.com/ , starting from ready boards from Sparkfun, then breadboard and then slowing moving to prototype boards. The schematic is pretty simple with some level converters, eventually atmega and couple of passive elements. Now I would like to make a next big step and move to making circuit boards exactly to my requirements. I know, that, there are already multiple expansion boards, and Trainer is almost what I need, but this is not part of the exercise I would like to learn doing this from scratch.

I imagine following workflow: I draw the schematic in some tool and perform tracing mostly automatic. Ready files are uploaded to some service, which produces (hopefully quite fast) 1 prototype. I get the prototype, check if everything works as expected (probably not :slight_smile: ) and repeat prototype phase several times. After I’m satisfied with final layout, I order something like 5-10 final boards. Obviously, it would be great, if the boards already soldered with required elements, but I’m not hoping, that such service is available for private purposes.

The problem, that I don’t have any idea, where to start. I found multiple programs and thousand tutorials to them, but I still couldn’t get a big picture and I didn’t really found any such service in Europe.

I would really appreciate if some of you guys write your experience and send couple of links on where to start.

Should I start with producing boards myself (I’ve read some techniques with laser printer) or just skip this step ? I wanted to use SMD elements, so I’m not sure it’s possible to produce it in home process.

Should I put some effort to learn manual tracing, or these days it is already very good automated ?

Are there some simulator tools, which could help me avoid beginner mistakes ?

Is there some ready to use libraries, not only for elements, but for ready to use schematic blocks ?

Probably this is not the most relevant forum to ask, but I hope, that I’m not the only one having these questions here and you guys could point me to right community.

Thanks in advance,
Maksym.

Which BeagleBoard is this for?
Where do you see this going? Are you looking to produce these for sale to the community or just strictly for your own use?
What sort of budget do you have?
Do you have any experience with layout tools?
How many components are there on these boards?

Gerald

Homebrew is one option:

PCB at home

Hi Gerald,

Which BeagleBoard is this for?

XM

Where do you see this going? Are you looking to produce these for sale to the community or just strictly for your own use?

Well, our project is completely open source in software and documentation and I would like to keep this in hardware area as well. The idea is to produce open low-cost robotics platform. Whether there will be interest in community for such board is another question.

What sort of budget do you have?

At the moment, this is strictly hobby project, so I could not invest a lot of time, maybe 8 hours per week. From money perspective, I did found couple of professional services, which could do this for me, but this was is couple of thousand dollars range, which is for hobby clearly too much.

Do you have any experience with layout tools?

Zero.

How many components are there on these boards?

The board is comparable with Trainer.

Gerald

As I said, I mostly looking for directions on how to learn all this. I realize, that this is not easy topic, but it’s not magic either.

Maybe, if such service for hobby project doesn’t exist it’s time to make a business out of it :wink:

Maksym.

Tony,

thanks for the link. There are a lot of information there, I will read it, definitely.

My suggestion is to start with http://www.sunstone.com/pcb123.aspx . It is free, router does route, good manual, and easy process to order boards, just push a button, pay the bill, and the boards show up in afew days. I have used them before. Nots as fancy as some tools, but for learning it is great and the boards are not that expensive if you leave off the silkscreen.

Gerald

Gerald,

thanks, almost exactly what I need. Would be great though to get the same in europe, having experienced multiple surprises with electronic parts and customs.

Thanks,
Maksym.

I am not sure what is availble in Europe that is similar, but they will ship to europe if you have the time to wait for it to show up!

Gerald

Off-topic question:

  • Does it have board-size and commercial limitations as put-up by free version of Eagle? (Nothing mentioned in the comparison table)

If no, then PCB123 is surely a great alternative to Eagle/KiCAD for hackers who want to make products-out-of-projects.

  • And is it cross-platform?

Gerald,