From the mail bag: Which developers get free PCBs?
George writes:
I’m of the understanding that you give away free PCBs to “dedicated developers”. I was curious how you determined what a dedicated developer was, as opposed to somebody that was just trying to get one from you to build. If you could let me know, I would appreciate it.
A dedicated developer is anyone willing to get the parts and build the board.
Most free PCBs are never built. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t mind if you never get around to building a free PCB. It’s nice just to get the name out there.
Active developers get a new board every time they finish a project. It’s nice to get design feedback, and there’s a growing base of committed developers who like to build in-development project.
People line up for the free PCB giveaways, but it’s rare that someone takes the time to write and ask for a code. It’s so rare that we figure if they took the time to write, it’s worth sending a PCB. Though due to this post, the bar just got substantially higher.
We’ll answer any questions about the Free PCB drawer and PCB giveaways in the comments.
Via the contact form.
This entry was posted in builds, Free PCBs.
Comments
I have not sent in a formal email or anything as I was just trying to be fair to all the others wanting a code. But in light of your post I will say that I just finished a reflow oven controller and would love to test it out on a board. I am gathering all the tools I need to start doing development and testing of boards and think a free PCB code would be a great start. Plus the knowledge gained per build will help me fine tune new skills. I learn better from getting in a doing things. :)
Hi Kevin:
Which reflow controller would that be? I’m sure other people besides myself would be interested. Since I have an old toaster oven sitting around and would love to put it to use reflowing PCB’s!
http://www.rocketscream.com/shop/reflow-oven-controller-shield-arduino-compatible
Very Detailed wiki and very helpful if things go wrong if your trying to make one yourself.
I’ve received one of the boards, and am about halfway through reflowing the parts on it. So far I’ve tested and checked everything I’ve added and it all checks out. One cool point though is the board I have is for a prototype idea, so there is not much information for making it work. Even though I like building pcb’s out testing and building software for them is a challenge in itself.
So that means if i wnat to be a active developer i need to get a coupon and then after i get the PCB and populate it with parts, write the firmware on it i’ll test it. If then i write a type of review i will get a new one?
I would like to be a developer, so i need to start and try to get a coupon.
I can tell you from now that for some people it is a bit hard to make a final assembly because of the rather small parts used. Let’s tae the logic shrimp, u used small smd parts, 0603, maybe 0805 or 1206 would be better for the home user with not much experience. I think that the board woldn’t be bigger. You used a ssop package for the PIC, it would have been better to use the SOIC(or TSOP) package. So a beginner could start on soldering smd IC’s. I understand when there is no bigger package, like the TQFP on the analyzer board.
So if the parts are a bit bigger, and easier to solder i think that more people would finish the boards.
Nice point sebu.
But it’s a point that we all use big parts, the DIP ones mostly while prototyping in protoboard or breadboard. And when our design completes, we then have to look for designing a neat and small PCB. Then we choose the small parts so that the board looks very neat. I agree that 0603 parts are tough to solder by iron, but there’s a small trick to do that perfectly. I personally use the following steps for soldering small SMD parts.
1. apply a hell lot of flux to the board. (I use wembley’s flux which costs 15gms at 8Rs or 0.2$)
2. Hold/press the smd component by a tweezer to the required place, and solder one pin of that.
3. Now release the tweezer and solder the second side. then solder again the first side neatly.
The same technique works for SMD Ics too like the TQFP, etc.
This makes the soldering greatly acheived. The loads of flux prevents any solder bridge between pins just like soldermask does. After all, clean the board with kerosine(gasoline) and a toothbrush and your board will look like it’s been make in SMD rework station.
This will work for you (maybe for me too, and the people who solderd much) coz we are used to solder but for someone who just switched from thd to smd it will be a bigger problem, so it’s easier to go from big to small.
There again it’s a problem ofnot finding the ssop pic but only the tsop or soic, what now?
Probably a dumb question that’s answered in a FAQ somewhere: are the boards available for sale? I can see a few PCBs at SeeedStudio… but not the “free drawer” selection you’ve got.
No now, but we’re working on getting a couple boards up for sale. It depends on arranging the shipping stuff.
One thing to keep in mind is that these free boards were not designed to be given away, and thus many decisions that would make them easy to hand-build were not chosen. The Dangerous Prototypes projects are mostly designed to be built by pick-and-place robots to keep the costs as low as possible. Inevitably, the first few prototypes require more PCBs to be made than are needed, and these are the ones that are given away. Basically, there’s a small community of people willing to build something by hand that was designed with the intention of primarily being built cheaply by robots.
I’d feel a little sad if I didn’t finish a PCB that I got for free, I see hand soldering very small components as a bit of a challenge! But I’ve certainly planned to build any PCB that I manage to get, still aiming for a Bus Pirate v3.5 SOIC PCB.
Kevin, I’ll have to look into that, I’ve been thinking myself about turning a toaster oven into a ‘full’ reflow oven.
I am working on a double logic shrimp. 8 channels, 2 shrimps on one pcb, 1 input header, 1 output header, 2 usb ports and i hope that i can manage to make connect them at the same time to the software and read from get the data at the same time from them.
Hmm, why two USB ports? That sounds like way more trouble than it’s worth.
Because i make 2 shrimps side by side, on one board. So i will have 8 inputs not 4. I can’t program a PIC, so there will be 2 USB outputs just like for 2 shrimps.
There’s no reason you couldn’t run all 8channels on one PIC (assuming there are enough pins), and there are higher pin-count versions of the same PIC. The code change is minor I think. They would not all have an interrupt though because the LS already uses all the available pin interrupts.
There was an interesting (if somewhat long) set of YouTube clips on HackADay a few days ago where a chap was making a batch of something like x10 USBparallel adapters. He was using a combination of a clothing iron (from below) and a hot air gun (from above) to reflow the solder. The iron was a great idea. I wonder how hot do they go. See 2:45 in this video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU3grl6Nu2U
Good thing I checked this today. I have a couple of the free pcbs that I recv’d a while ago. Due to a very tight budget, I am currently going through my “obtainium” pile for parts, mainly old motherboards and related stuff. Hopefully I will only have to buy the PIC and the FTDI parts.
I was wondering what to use for reflow, when I noticed a remark in this post about using a toaster oven, and I remembered I have one in my garage.
I usually don’t ask because I didn’t think I would qualify. I haven’t used Eagle before and it takes me a while to gather parts so the whole process is a hassle.
I agree with @Sebu, @Crenn & @Arup that we do mainly soldering with bigger parts, but would try to complete Free PCB’s with any type components, if we get one..
Sebu: You’d probably be better off just building two separate Logic Shrimp boards rather than tying together the power supplies and ground lines of two USB ports. Putting two independent circuits on one board really gains you nothing, but it certainly creates unique problems.
I don’t think that two independent 4-channel logic analyzers are quite as useful as a single 8-channel logic analyzer. They’re going to be running on completely independent clocks and you probably won’t find a SUMP client that would merge two Logic Shrimp streams into one display.
If you need more than 4 channels, then I recommend the Logic Sniffer or perhaps you should design a middle-weight 8-channel logic analyzer between the Logic Shrimp and the 16/32-channel Logic Sniffer.
A new design would be a solution but my knowledge is to small to do that. I think i will make 2 single 4-channel board and will add a 3-rd clock board, so i will have a external clock that gives both of the shrimps the same clock.
The part with the SUMP will be a problem.
It seems like more effort and cost would be involved than getting/building a Logic Sniffer.
My thoughts ar on the sampling rate of the sniffer vs shrimp. I will use it on simple arduino stuff, no high speed advanced circuits. So, a sniffer would be enough?
@Cristi Sebu
The logic sniffer is great for arduino stuff. im using it to debug i2c/spi stuff.
Shrimp is great cause it has a bigger memory but logic sniffer has more advanced triggers
I got the logic sniffer first and plan to get pcb or the assembled version from seed of the shrimp :)
I sent an email a while back expressing my desire to build a Bus Blaster to help me in my VHDL course but I never got an answer to it…
I think it would have helped me a great deal as the school would lend us the FPGA developpement board to take home but not the JTAG programmer (go figure it out :S). I would still like it tough, I plan on buying a small budget platform to experiment at home.
I asked nicely as well for my Bus blaster v2, and received a confirmation that it was shipped out 24 June. It is two months and I still feel guilty a bit for asking. I haven’t built it yet – because I think that the postman must have been robbed. Either that or he has a nice collection of the busblaster pcb, 100 transistors, USB sound card and other junk that I bought it June.
All of these did not turn up, and I tend to trust the sellers from China.
A rather far fetched idea re development boards (eg FPGA board mentioned above). For most people you want to cut your teeth on a new technology. You do a small project and then the perfectly good board gets shoved into a drawer and forgotten about. Now there are websites (I presume they are still going) where you put a label on a book. When you’re done, you just leave it at a place where someone is likely to pick it up (coffee shop, train station etc). The label has a unique ID and explains you can keep it and please log on to a site and say you got it. The donor has the satisfaction of knowing their book is now in good hands… and hopefully the cycle continues. Would this work with low cost development boards? You get a free board, you keep it as long as you like, but you should post it to someone else on a waiting list when you’re done. Then register the transaction on a website.
that nice i piratically begged before several times for a pcb code and this guy gets one with a silly question. lol
i guess i needed to take a snapshot of me begging for one.