2 replies to this topic

[firestar]

Hi All,

 

I made my first design for a PCB using Fritzing. It will be used to read out the P1 port of my meter. I have this currently built up on my breadboard and seems to work nicely.

 

It has an EEProm for storage of settings (NTP Server, IP settings, Serial settingsetc..)

FET for signal inversion

Two LEDs for Web activity and P1 Activity

A switch to broadcast UDP messages to my AddressServer (based on BOOTP) to externally set IP parameters.

 

As I'm not an electronic designer, I'd like to get some feedback on the design. I tried to segregate the +5VDC as much to the bottom plane and the grounds to the top plane.

 

I'll make a shield out of it, but I have reduced the print to what I need in space (and drop price), that's why top left pins will not be used.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 P1 Final_pcb.jpg   31.81KB   63 downloads

[Paul Newton]

Looks like a good start.

 

It looks like you have set the spacing correctly between D7 and D8. Its worth double checking - it beleive it should be 0.15" instead of the 0.2" between A0 and Vin.

(I wish they had not used that spacing between those pins - it makes it really hard to use vero board for prototyping .)

 

Should there be a decoupling capacitor on the power supply of the IC?

 

Do you really want to use a double sided PCB? You could easily re-route a couple of tracks and have a single sided one. (Possibly using a single wire link.)

 

Consider bringing out the header pads to an extra row of pads to allow you to solder other stuff on at a later date.

(I have an Ardumoto motor driver board and am annoyed that there is no neat way to get signals from the headers to the prototyping area.)

 

If you are paying for silk screen, label all the header pads - that's really useful later on!

 

Have fun - Paul

[firestar]

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks for your comments. The double PCB is standard in Fritzing (in what I started out with) so I went with that for now. However since Fritzing is giving me some small issues i'm thinking about switching to the free version of Eagle and use something like Seeedstudio for the PCBs (as it will give me a few PCBs for the same price, so if I mess up one with soldering).

 

I checked the IC datasheet to make sure but they dont put the requirements out there, it is a simple eeprom. However I'm thinking if I shouldnt add a 10 and 100 nF cap to the incoming power supply to the board just to make it nice

 

I'm still thinking if I should make a shield (clip on) or just a seperate PCB with a few wire jumpers. That will allow me to mount the RJ connector nicely in a case.

 

Thanks.

Martin