For that you have to ask a lawyer in your country. But my guess is that in US the answer will be something about circumventing DRM (Digital rights management) and thus also falls under DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). And then the end-result product might be "tainted" by those possible infringements.
From their FAQ:
--- Free* All devices and memory supported Minimal optimization Commercial use permitted
*Free comes with a 60-day evaluation of the PRO compiler that can be turned on whenever you like. ---
So from this I'd guess that it is permitted to commercially use (and thus sell the end result) the Free compiler during the 60-day-PRO mode.
But I couldn't find any "holes" in the outline. If I drag the different segments of the outline in Eagle its neighboring segments moved along, that usually indicates that Eagle have them connected. Maybe there was some rounding error in the write-as-gerbers function....
Doub, a time saving feature for me would be if I just could drop a zip file instead of the separate gerbers onto the viewer. I usually make a final check of the zipped gerbers before sending them off to the fab to spot any leftover brainfarts.
Another thing, it seems like if I have silk extending outside of the dimension layer the viewer doesn't clip it there.
Yea, it seems like it actually would be possible to distribute the source of Microchip libraries. The term "software" is not defined in the pdf, but it can be inferred that the source is a part of the software and thus can be re-distributed as long as the "click to accept" condition is fulfilled at download.
Software License Grant. Microchip grants strictly to Licensee a non-exclusive, non transferable, worldwide license to:
a. use the Software in connection with Licensee Products and/or Third Party Products;
b. if Source Code is provided, modify the Software; provided that Licensee clearly notifies Third Parties regarding the source of such modifications;
c. distribute the Software to Third Parties for use in Third Party Products, so long as such Third Party agrees to be bound by this Agreement (in writing or by "click to accept") and this Agreement accompanies such distribution;
d. sublicense to a Third Party to use the Software, so long as such Third Party agrees to be bound by this Agreement (in writing or by "click to accept");
While browsing one of the numerous "dollar stores" in the area where I live I found this small tester pen. It was kinda nice in yellow metal (might actually be brass) and a protected needle and it seemed large enough for fitting small button cell batteries inside so I bought a few for "future use".
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It seems like it's made for testing if there's 12 volt in the wires in a car since the only part inside the pen is a incandescent bulb. Clip the alligator to some metal and then stick the pointy needle into the wires you want to test.
The lightbulb was for me a completely new model... They have put a smallish bulb inside what looks like a regular 1 ⁄4" x 7 ⁄8" (6.3 x 22.2mm) fuse. Kinda cool, so I though it was worth sharing here. :)
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And yes, button cells of type 392A fits just fine inside the tube. I bought a 10-pack of them for $0.46 at the same store just to test. For that price they probably are just crappy "Onehunglow" quality but how can you manufacture, ship and sell a 10-pack of batteries and still make a profit in all parts of the chain? Strange....
Do you really need a proper connector? Maybe just two small pieces of metal that is "magnetic" that can snap to two small neodymium magnets that are connected to the charging power... That would make it easier to connect as well.
If there's a charging indicator on the pendant or the base charger unit you'd probably not need gold plated connectors. The user will just wiggle it a bit until the indicator light up if there would be any corrosion/dirt on the contact surfaces.
Ooohhhhhh.... This is really nice! j I tested the latest version on a few different gerbers with internal cutouts and it rendered them flawlessly. And the no-silk-on-copper option works just fine as well.
[quote="doub"It's all 6mil tracks and 6mil spacing (actually 0.15mm since I'm doing it all in metric). It's the first time I use tracks that small, it's also part of the experiment.[/quote]
PCB experiments.... That is something a can definitely relate to ^_^
To be fair the boardhouses can to much better than they tell you. By mistake I moved a capacitor and forgot to run a drc afterwards and then sent for the pcbs. One track ended up at 3 mil distance from the capacitor pads and one track was going through the pads.
The 3mil distance turned out to be ok on all 20 copies - the one that was going through the ads had to be cut and greenwired :)
I'm not an expert in the area, but my uneducated guess would be that matched-length routing might be a bit overkill here. The maximum sdram-clk from the stm is only 90 MHz giving a cycle time of about 10 nS. If the lengths of the data lines varies by 1 cm that would give a skew of 3 pS (calculated on light speed in vacuum, not on the actual speed on a pcb). That is a skew of about 0.03%. Probably the signal speed in the transmission lines would vary more due to proximity to a groundplane or not.
I'd be more worried about the track widths and track spacings on the board. They seem to be like 5 or 6 mils in a lot of places without any good reason. With 5 you have exceeded what the cheap boardhouses can reliably do. Don't tempt fate just because you can :-)
If I was running Tindie I'd just outsource the bookkeeping. 10000 transactions in like two years is only about 15 per day. Say 50 txn today, that's not a major task. And with a bit of coding-wizardry the system should be able to generate datafiles that the ledger can import directly.
Same thing with doing the visual stuff/graphics for the website - outsource.
Then we basically have coding and marketing left. Hire one guy to do coding and some support fulltime, and then as the owner split the day between coding & marketing efforts.
I don't know what's going on behind the scenes and what deal that have been made with what type of investor, but I've never seen anyone willing to invest even such a low amount as $500K into a company without having a close eye on (and some control over) how the money is used. So probably the investors are ok with the things as they are today. So really..., who am I to say what's wrong and right?
