I am pleased to announce the first public release of FlyingBone.
Design files can be downloaded from https://github.com/piranha32/FlyingBone
The repository contains gerber files, KiCad design files and exported BeagleBone
components for use with schematic and PCB designs.
The board can be fabricated using one of the low-cost PCB houses, like
Seeed Studio
or ITead Studio.
To order at Seeed you will need to choose 2-sided 10cm x 10cm board.
100% electric check
is highly recommended (unless you are going to use only half of the
boards, or have too
much spare time and enjoy spending evenings looking for shorts on
proto boards).
The total cost of 10 boards with 100% e-check will be $25+shipping.
For $10 extra, you
can have boards with white solder mask.
ITead has similar prices.
You can't read the design in Eagle. If you're beginning your adventure
with designing PCBs, I strongly advise to stay away from Eagle. The
free version is a trap: sooner or later you'll have to design board
which exceeds the limits of the free version and then you'll face the
choice: ditch all your designs, custom components libraries and
experience and design the board with something else, or spend $$$$ on
the commercial version.
It's better to start from the beginning with a tool which gives you
room for expansion.
I will generate PDFs and upload to github later today
KiCad is free, quite powerful and and actively developed. I haven't
shopped for design tools for a long time, but from what I remember,
one of older versions of Protel used to be available for free. I think
you need to google around and see what is available. However, I'd
suggst to give a try to KiCad. I know several people who after playing
a bit with it switched from Eagle.
I guess we all have those sort of dreams. I don’t see that happening. It is not like 50% use just one tool. Thee are so many of them and everyone has their preferences.
I have spent some time trying to find appropriate headers for a
beaglebone cape. I looked through sullins website as well as
digikey. Can you point me to where you found a supplier?
If you think about headers appropriate for stacking - I did not find a
supplier. I didn't find any at digikey, I did check sullins. One of
the suppliers recommended by SRM is Major League Electronics, but out
of all of the US distributors listed on their site only Future
Electronics has a usable webs store. Unfortunately they don't carry
connectors with long tails. I found another supplier of suitable
connectors (4conn), but I have no idea who sells their products in
single quantities. Maybe Gerald could help?
If you do not need stacking, any 2.54mm connector should be fine. I'm
going to use drawer-supplied breakaway single row headers, that I
bought once from Ebay. Not the most elegant solution, but worked fine
in my previous projects.
Easy. They are their own distributor. You can go to their website and order them direct. I am working a plan to have these connectors stocked at CircuitCo, but I have not gotten that totally set up.
