Custom Shield - Protoboard

Okay. Thanks for replys.

@spydrop,

Iā€™ll keep-in-view this point and see how this goes ;).

The level-shifter is definitely needed and the shield shield as of now is a better candidate

Spacing is 10mils but itā€™s a little too tight for that matter i guess?

I hand-drawn the corners so iā€™ll make them identical ya :stuck_out_tongue:

The missing-lineā€¦ Yes totally! hahahaā€¦ I was trying to decide on whether to connect the RST or 3V3* and totally forgot about this lineā€¦

If that's 10 mils, you're good. Even 8 would probably be fine. The spacing from the outer track to the edge of the board needs to be at least 25 mils if that edge is scored, or as close as 10 mils if it's routed. These numbers should be double checked with the PCB mfg. you end up using. Obviously designing for MORE space that this will put you well in the green.

I would definitely go for 3V3 and 3V3* before I added RST.

Speaking of power, it would be super nice to have more than one point for power and ground, kind of like all breadboards have power rails. Most of the arduino proto shields also have a small to large power rail for 5V and GND. I just don't see an easy way to get it on this board. For power, your choices are VIN, 3V3 and 3V3*. Personally I use them all fairly equally so I can't say which would be best to hook up if you could only hook up one or two to a small strip of like 5 points.

I'll keep this in mind. Kinda bothers me too every time i look at the edges :smile:

Hi5 on this. That's why i eventually settled on the RST being left out on the main area and leaving it on the pad near the top left.

Ah...indeed i gave this i thought while looking at it this morning. I was like hey! the corner pins are given no space for soldering....

So the plan would be to move the pinouts slightly further down a few columns, extend those power rails abit and make it more comfortable for prototyping!

I'm more concern about how to handle the 3V3* since it's for sensitive circuitry and i should put some extra thought to route it properly.... ideas?

Thanks once again :smiley: I'm learning lots as we progress!

2 or 4 mounting holes :slight_smile:

Following @BDubā€™s suggestion for more power pads, i did some re-routing again!

I realized i can make things better be routing the 5v using the top layer instead and save more space.

The TX and RX is kinda isolated as wellā€¦

Let me know how it is :smile:

Iā€™m liking the fact that the D0-D7 and A0-A7 pins are still in order (reverse order but order nontheless).

One thing I always do for through hole connections that I know are going to be soldered and desoldered frequently, is add teardrops to the pins, or just a thick stub of a track sticking off the edge. This helps to strengthen the pad when applying excessive heat (which easily can happen even with good tools). Cheap Radio Shack irons are going to further increase the risk of excessive heat. This basically de-laminates the pad from PCB. The thick stub or teardrop will strengthen the pad, thermally dissipate some of the excessive heat and hopefully keep the pad connected to the track in the even that it does partially de-laminate.

One important thing for any proto board is good labeling of your available connections. Have you worked on this? Might be a little tricky to label the 3V3* and GND connections well.

As @spydrop said, 2 mounting holes under the Core footprint might be nice. Maybe a 4 hole square area for each mounting hole will look nice. Not sure if that will accommodate a #6 screw, but a #4 or #6 are pretty commonly available size screws.

How can I add the teardrop?

Definitely gonna add the soldermask labelling but the prototyping machine im gonna use is a milling kind and not gonna give me that!

So Iā€™m gonna focus on the functionality and let the aesthetics be covered during the actual pcb production :slight_smile:

I knew you were going to ask this question :slight_smile: However I haven't done this in Eagle yet.. but a quick google search shows it's possible Eagle QuickTip: Teardrops Ā« Adafruit Industries ā€“ Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!

Thickening up the last leg of the trace that connects to the pad would be easy too.. or just make a polygon shape that you can copy/paste.

You are going to mill this out? God speed brother :grimacing:

We have the latest of the model in our lab so itā€™s gonna be fast! Priority to the micrSD shield!

Parts arrived at the reception an hour ago ^^

The teardrops sure look interesting!

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Nice protoboard design we can learn from!

Maybe Iā€™m missing the point of the proto board but Iā€™d suggest a row of pads at the top and bottom shorted to the core pin pads (where appropriate) to make soldering easier. In a similar vein, Iā€™d put pads under the core just to increase the area for components. Yes Iā€™d like several.

Thanks for the suggestion but Iā€™m not exactly sure what is it that you would like to see on the protoboard.

This are all through-hole vias for soldering and the only area left untouched is the red and blue lines portion.

I agree with @captnkrunch about the solder pads directly next to each core pin if only to make it easier to tie in each given pin as needed using 90 degree pins to have Bread Board (Digital Side) ==> Your Proto Board <== (Analog Side) Bread Board.

Does that sound cool or what ? :smile:

Am I right to say you guys would like to see an extra row of pads on each side of the core and all linked to the pins ajacent?

That might make the board much bigger and doesnā€™t help with prototyping in my opinion.

The pins are all linked to the top and bottom row on the right of the :spark: core respectively.

But Iā€™m always open to making it better :slight_smile:

Yes ā€¦ on the two long sides of the core. This will increase the total width by 0.2 inches. In my opinion, a small price to pay for not having to solder to the same pins used by the core.

So iā€™m pretty keen on making and distributing some protoboards for the SparkCore.

Iā€™ve got plans for three sizes a tiny one no wider than the core. A medium one just a bit bigger than the core and a larger one with more space.

Iā€™ve started with the medium one. Its only a little larger than the core. The pins either side of the core are linked to the cores pins. This makes it easy to use the proto area inside the core for building up small circuits as well as having a row on the outside of the core making it easy to hook up external components. There are extra rows of linked holes for Vin, Gnd and 3.3 Volts. There are also mounting holes.

Iā€™ve just received my first prototype and iā€™m happy with them, just got to fix up the silkscreen to show the links between the core and the adjacent pins.

The plan is to have a batch of these made up and sell them on tindie hopefully fairly soon.

Iā€™ve used heaps of Arduino protoboardā€™s in the past to build up various projects and iā€™ve been missing having some small protoboardā€™s for the SparkCore.

Suggsestions welcomed.




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Those look great! Iā€™ll definitely be interested when you put them up for sale!