This thread will be for the technical discussion pertaining to the design, production, and use of development kit revision number 2.
The concept is to build all of the components into one working circuit board that can be mass produced same as the Development Kit for the original Arduboy.
I have prepared this hypothetical and top secret image of what the dev kit 2 could look like with a hopeful and hypthetical sponsorship with Hackster.io
I only just sent them an email now, letās cross our fingers they are hopeful. It will actually be awesome if I get them on board, because maybe I can go to Atmel and get them āon boardā too.
Iāll be ditching the battery so it will only work while plugged into USB. The ground and vcc pins pads will be exposed on the back so if you want to attach a battery you can do that too but youāll need your own charging circuit.
Any other feedback is welcome at this time!
EDIT: Oops forgot to move the usb connector to the middle on the back side!
Prepare your disappointment, I will not be writing everyoneās names on the pcb, there will be other opportunities for credit. My plan is to put the names within the āfirst runā video that plays when users turn on the device for the first time.
I guess Iāll put a small reset button on the dev kit, the first one didnāt have one and you had to use a wire or paperclip. Iām gonna look for the smallest surface mount button I can find.
Doesnāt matter. Both are orders of magnitude more expensive than shopping in Huaqiangbei. Iāve been spoiled. If I was in the markets, and wanted maybe 10 of these I could very easily ask for them as samples. The vendor would likely be insulted if I tried to pay for such a small quantity, itās happened a number of times. Come back and buy several thousand, is what they want.
And of course I could touch, feel, smell and taste every component under the sun to find just the right one.
I knew I wouldnāt be able to make this a 1 layer design like I did the first dev kit⦠but I didnāt think it would bother me this much!
Iāve considered doing a 4 layer board but⦠it costs twice as much⦠but actually without blind/buried vias then the bottom layer would have a bunch of dots on it anyways so⦠yeah.
On a scale of 1 to 5 how important is the aesthetics of trace routing on a PCB to you?
Maybe I should route it completely abstract, turn off the grid and use freeform trace routing. Kinda like they used to be done by hand with a projector and photo resist.