RAREblog

Yesterday I got involved in a couple of discussions on Twitter on two related topics: choosing software for PCB design, and choosing PCB Fab companies to make short runs of prototype boards. I'll write a little about the PCB Fabs in another post. At the risk of having to don flame-proof safety gear, I'll share some of my experience from the last couple of years, and my current preferences. Quick2Wire Analogue Board Disclaimer Please don't expect an exhaustive survey. I don't normally work on Windows, and I don't have a Mac, so this is written from the perspective of a Linux user. That's why I have not tried DesignSPark PCB. Nor have I looked much at KiCad, simply because my first attempts some while ago were discouraging. Eagle and Fritzing The two products that I have used are Eagle and Fritzing. Eagle is very well established as a design tool for amateur and professional users. It's very capable, and has very extensive libraries. Since CAD...

There's a revolution underway in Computer Science education. The Raspberry Pi has generated a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm, but there's also a lot of interesting activity around the Arduino. One great Arduino resource is the Shrimp, a low-cost compatible design aimed at educators and hobbyists with limited budgets. Landing the Shrimp You can find out more on the Shrimping It  blog. It describes ' the Shrimp  – a substitute for the Arduino Uno, which can be constructed for about a tenth of the price of the official board, shown here in stripboard and breadboard versions.' Note the absence of a PCB version! That's deliberate: the idea is that you will lean more, and feel more of a sense of ownership, if you have constructed the shrimp from scratch. That makes sense but I can see two situations where shrimp-catchers might prefer a PCB to work with. Some beginners starting out on their own might feel more confident building a PC...

One of the great things about Arduino is that whatever you're trying to do, there is a good chance that someone has done it before and posed the code. Mark Gilbey and I are currently working on my poor man's pick and place 'bot. We'll be moving the head around using some SparkFun steppers, and I liked the look of the EasyDriver Stepper Controller. The EasyDriver website has an  examples page which includes a wiring diagram and sample Arduino sketches. I tried it out and everything just worked. The motor is turning in micro-steps of 1/800th of a revolution, at a speed of 5000 micro-steps per second.

I've just got back home after an enjoyable afternoon introducing my brother-in-law to the Arduino. He's a designer by profession. He lives on a Dutch barge near Canary wharf, so he's a competent electrician, but he's new to embedded hardware and micro controllers. (If you want a quiet but luxurious place to stay in Docklands with a 5 star breakfast, take a look at their website ). I took along oomlout's excellent  ARDX arduino starter kit , and by the afternoon he was tweaking happily tweaking example sketches. He now sees why I find the embedded world so exciting, and I hope he'll be contributing to our Raspberry Pi -based projects at quick2wire . At the end of our session we started talking about CAD for electronics. As a designer he uses CAD a lot and wondered what CAD tools were used for electronics. Since we'd spent the afternoon working with a breadboard, I showed him Fritzing , When he saw how easy it was ...