Proto board

PrinceNai · Joined: 31 Oct 2016 Posts: 480 Location: Montenegro

Dear all,

For some time I'm toying with the idea of a kind of a "unified" prototype board for this forum. A lot of times the first answer is "check your grounds, connections, wires". That would eliminate that, barring bad soldering. For me, I developed 8 iterations (each version correcting one or more mistakes from the previous one) of something dubbed PicBreak. It is made around 18f46k22 Pic, 100x50 mm, OLED display, all the ports outside, three push buttons, external interrupts on separate pins, reset, power LED, OK LED, both I2C's available separately, ICD, 5 or 3,3V selectable via jumper. USB powered. Done with a through hole parts, easier assembly. 20 boards cost like 22€. I'm not a layout wizard, 90% of it was done with the autorouter. But it works up to 32MHz without a glitch (I always use internal oscillator, so it probably works on 64). Whenever something doesn't work for me (and it doesn't work a lot of first times), I know it's a program not the hardware. Saves tons of time. I can share what I've done so far and can also work on all suggested improvements. My question is if anyone thinks it might be a good idea to develop something like that.

Regards,
Samo

dluu13 · Joined: 28 Sep 2018 Posts: 395 Location: Toronto, ON

I use two different flavours of the PIC curiosity boards from Microchip for this.. they come with something called Mikrobus headers which make it really easy to test new components too.

temtronic · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 4:56 am

I'd like it even a bit bigger, maybe same size as the 'white breadboard', with say 3 pads per pin as well as a generous grid of pads to one side. I keep the ICSPs pins dedicated to ICSP. I've come close but never run out of pins ,so far.....
It'd be nice to have such a board, GREAT for 'Proof of Concepts', 'prototypes', small runs AND STUDENTS !! Given the Worldwide appeal of PICs, I'm really disappointed such a board doesn't exist.

PrinceNai · Joined: 31 Oct 2016 Posts: 480 Location: Montenegro

100x100 mm is the limit for "cheap". But I guess you could fit a lot of things on that.

temtronic · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 5:25 am

good to know ! about 4" by 4" ... THAT I can see ( at 70 eyes aren't 'young' anymore)....