I cut mine to fit my box:
and higher amperage than the Arduino can put out
It's not clear that the power supply boards can provided much more current than the Arduino itself.
(Perhaps bursts, as you said.) It's more of a power-dissipation thing than the specific chips involved.
according to my BB power supplies, the scale is ever so slightly oversize
Really? My protoboards measure pretty much exactly 0.3 inches from the signal holes to the power holes, and a terminal strip with two pins removed fits fine...
OTOH, it looks like the SF board has the power holes offset 0.05in in the OTHER direction, which could be a problem. (although, that shouldn't matter, with the power supplies I looked at...)
Do you know exactly which power supply you are using?
Sorry, I meant that my total load is more than the Due can support so the extra P/S comes in handy. The P/S indeed does not by itself provide more max current than the Due. But it provides just the additional capacity I need for a total that is more than the Due can provide.
I have a small collection of these bb p/s (more on order, but from Banggood so taking forever). They all look identical but some have YwRobot stencilled on them. Boards are black.
westfw:
Really? My protoboards measure pretty much exactly 0.3 inches from the signal holes to the power holes, and a terminal strip with two pins removed fits fine...
But is the spacing between the "column" rows and the power rails actually a tenth inch multiple on the solderless breadboard? You do not usually bridge components with rigid spacing between the two, so they may well not be.
And the "Breadboard power supply" module may be designed to match a known intolerance.
Hint: Does it fit turned sideways, into the "column" part of the board?
If I take my YwRobot BBPS and rotate it 90 degrees so that its long axis aligns with the long axis of the PCB, I can get the 4 pins on one side of it to slide easily into 4 holes in the component area on the SparkFun red solderable BB. They fit nicely whether inside one column of holes, or spanning the gap in the middle. I can also get those 4 pins into the component area and the power rail at the same time, but the PS ends up skewed slightly as the pairs of holes in the power rail don't line up with the lines of holes in the component area.
OK, now I rotate it back to its normal orientation, long axis of PS aligned with short axis of PCB, connector outward. Now we have 2 sets of 4 pins that want to drop into the power rails on each side. Note: the 4 pins still drop perfectly into the component area.
What about the rails? Any one set of 4 pins on the PS aligns perfectly with one rail, on either side (i.e., when either outer edge of the PS just overlaps with either outer edge of the board and most of the PS is off the PCB). So the side-to-side spacing of the power rail holes matches the PS and so does the longitudinal spacing.
HOWEVER. When I orient the PS normally, in the way it's supposed to be mounted, and try to engage with both rails at once, I find that the rails are just a tick too far apart. On either one rail or the other, the pins end up contacting the metal rim around the holes instead of the hole itself. They contact the metal rim on the side towards the centre of the PCB, so the holes are too far apart by about 1/32".
Now I think that with needle nosed pliers and careful perseverance, I can bend those pins so they will seat properly or at least workably. But why do I have to? Surely these bog-standard Chinese BBs which always match these bog-standard Chinese P/S so perfectly are well documented, and it would have been easy to make the PCB match the popular product? Maybe I should be shopping for a bog-standard Chinese solderable BB 
The idea of having a few fabbed is growing on me... but I have never edited a PCB design file so it would be a bit of an experiment
westfw:
You could easily have 10 boards that match your requirement exactly (as long as they don't exceed 100mm length - about 38 positions) made for about $3/board... You can even download the Adafruit design files and modify them as needed...
Also, I have an EAGLE ULP where you "run protoboard", specify the number of rows and where you want power rails (inside, outside, both), and it'll plop down the design on a PCB... It currently uses the 0.3 inch separation for outside power rails...
OK westfw, I'm willing to reveal my abysmal ignorance to the whole darned world. Eagle is a CAD program for making PCBs? So I googled that and found that there is a free version for hobbyists and they do compile for OSX, so I downloaded it. The size limitation seems hugely generous for my purposes.
What is a ULP? and how might I get one from you?
I gather that the workflow is something like: Run Eagle, create design, export in some industry standard file format, send file to board fab lab, send money, wait for goodies to arrive in mail?
Are all fab labs the same or are there some you would recommend above others? Where for example, would I find the $3/board price for qty 10?
[Aside: If 3d printers were capable of printing PCBs that would be the excuse I've been wanting, to waste some money on one!]
What is a ULP? and how might I get one from you?
A ULP is a "User Language Program", a capability where EAGLE lets you write C-like programs that do things beyond its normal capabilities. It's wonderful. A protoboard consists of hundreds of pads, connected in a specific pattern, which is a pain to do manually. The ULP lets you say
"run protoboard", specify the details parametricaly, and off it goes... I'll attach it here.
the workflow is something like: Run Eagle, create design, export in some industry standard file format, send file to board fab lab, send money, wait for goodies to arrive in mail?
Yep. In your case, I'd add "print test copy of PCB and see if the holes line up. Move groups of pads around until they do."
If the Adafruit or Sparkfun boards are really close to what you want, you may want to note that those are also EAGLE designs that you can download files for, and it might be better to adjust them (they have prettier markings than what the ULP currently generates, for example.)
Some PCB houses will accept an EAGLE .brd file directly. I've never done that, so I'm not sure which (other than oshpark.com, which would be expensive for this sort of board.)
The $3/board price comes from the usual $2 to $10 for 10 boards up to 100x100mm, plus about $20 for DHL shipping. LOTS of places have approximately the same deal.
I've used, IIRC, Iteadstudio, Seeedstudio, JLCPCB, PCBWay, and OSHPark.
JLCPCB has been slightly faster (impressively quick, but I might have just been lucky) and they're my go-to site at the moment. They have instructions for generating the files they need from EAGLE. The way these companies work, AFAIK, is that they collect designs from "everyone" until they have enough to fill up a "panel", then they run it through their process, break the boards apart, and ship them to the correct places. So the exact timing may be a bit variable.
I've never had quality problems, but I have pretty conservative designs...
protoboard.ulp.zip (2.13 KB)
@westfw very helpful indeed, thank you so much for introducing me to yet another new world.
this sounds like a good skill to learn. I agree that starting with a known design and tweaking it sounds smarter than trying to do a whole proto board myself.
you suggest printing the board for quality assurance -- does this mean that Eagle output prints at such an accurate scale that I'll be able to tell from the paper version whether it works? that would be nifty.
I will fire up Eagle and make a n00by foray into it soon. Your tips and hints are exactly what I need to get started. Many thanks.
does this mean that Eagle output prints at such an accurate scale that I'll be able to tell from the paper version whether it works?
Yes. You can do things like toner transfer or expose photosensitive PCB material (techniques for homemade PCB making, dating to back when getting boards professionally made was very expensive) direct from EAGLE printouts. It even has scaling adjustments to correct for any inaccuracies introduced by your printer.
There are a lot of on-line tutorials for using EAGLE, although I imagine that many of them are a bit out-of-date. For instance: https://www.instructables.com/id/Turn-your-EAGLE-schematic-into-a-PCB/
westfw:
A ULP is a "User Language Program", a capability where EAGLE lets you write C-like programs that do things beyond its normal capabilities. It's wonderful. A protoboard consists of hundreds of pads, connected in a specific pattern, which is a pain to do manually. The ULP lets you say
"run protoboard", specify the details parametricaly, and off it goes...
ObjectiveC, not C, I believe. Very useful, I use an ULP to generate a script to
laser-cut a solder-stencil for each side of a board, and another to generate a BoM.
The ULP is designed for easy tree-walking of the PCB doc tree.
I DL'd the file for the sparkfun solderable proto board and tried loading the .brd file (obtained here) into Eagle. [Learning in the process that Eagle is a feature jungle with a steep learning curve!]
Mostly, despite the bewildering feature set, it made sense. I could turn on and off layers representing the silk, the traces, etc. The only thing that is puzzling me now is that this board has no holes
Also no vias.
Where the holes should be, are just little golden squares in the tDocu layer.
So I'm a bit puzzled. Is this not the actual .brd file for the solderable BB? Or has it been left incomplete so that the downloader can customise it? It has traces tying the pads together, it has everything except the holes. Odd. What am I not understanding?
When I look at the output from your handy dandy ULP by contrast I see tons of vias, one for every hole, which is what I would expect.
So I tried starting with your ULP, drew a geometry border around it, checked it on my printer (yes, it seems like it should fit the bbps I have). I want to make one more mod, which is to add 4 predrilled mounting holes. As a complete Eagle n00b of course I'm finding most online resources far too advanced -- it is hard to find the answer to a really dumb question like "how do I add a size 4 mounting hole?"
I have discovered how to select the Holes layer and how to create 4 holes, and also found that I can modify Properties of Holes like position and diameter... but now I'm struggling with drill sizes.
If I just specify an inch size (like 1/8), will a PCB fab shop accept that? I keep getting the "nega" (circle with a slash through it) symbol for my mounting hole, and am not sure whether this means it would not be drilled by the fab shop, or just means I've chosen a size not on Eagle's very limited drill menu. It would be nice if that menu looked more like a real drill index...
I forged ahead with it anyway (what the heck, cheap gamble). I tried JLCPCB on your recommendation, & found their upload instructions a little confusing for the total n00b. Eagle CAD generated two folders, one called DrillFiles containing a solitary xln file and the other called GerberFiles containing, guess what, various Gerber files. I had difficulty getting JLCPCB's previewer to visualise the holes -- tried putting the xnl file inside the Gerber folder and then zipping, etc, but couldn't quite figure out what I was supposed to do with it. In the end I zipped both dirs (GerberFiles and DrillFiles) into one zipfile and uploaded that, hoping they can sort it out.
Watching their instruction video for the third time I saw that I missed a step: it appears that I have to add Vias manually (darnit).
If you are running EagleCAD v9 or so, how do you organise your zipfile for submission to JCLPCB?
sterretje:
It was just to show the typeNo idea about the quality. banggood and the likes did not exist 40-odd years ago 8)
but we did have Poly-Paks . . .
Sorry for the delay; I've been hosting a NYE/NYD party, which involved a lot of cooking and non-online activity...
Mostly, despite the bewildering feature set, [EAGLE] made sense.
Yea! That's better than most people's first effort with EAGLE. It tends to trigger a lot of "how come you select a verb and apply it to an object instead of selecting an object and then applying a verb (like every other modern GUI interface?" reactions...
Um. First of all I should comment that I'm only running EAGLE 7.x - I actually bought a copy of the "non-profit" license, and I'm sticking to it until something really compelling comes along. So some of what I say may be a bit out of date...
The only thing that is puzzling me now is that this board has no holes
Where the holes should be, are just little golden squares in the tDocu layer.
What am I not understanding?
You're missing that the actual HOLES are in the "Drills" layer. "Holes" are one of the objects that contains a Drill. "Vias" and "Pads" also contain drills (and copper and signals as well.)
While my ULP plunks down a whole bunch of Vias (which are sort-of temporary trace components), the Sparkfun board is made up of a bunch of connector "components", which are more permanent (not affected by "rip-up" and re-routing) They have lots of vertical 5-pin connectors, and some big horizontal 29-pin connectors, so if you want to move them around, you have to select by the component rather than by selecting a group of vias. (The Adafruit board also uses vias.)
"how do I add a size 4 mounting hole?"
I have discovered how to select the Holes layer and how to create 4 holes, and also found that I can modify Properties of Holes like position and diameter... but now I'm struggling with drill sizes.
If I just specify an inch size (like 1/8), will a PCB fab shop accept that?
I usually use a large-diameter Via for mounting holes, but "hole" will also work. And yes, you can just specify 0.125 as the drill size (if your grid is set to "english" mode), and the board house will accept it. You may want a slightly larger larger hole than the screw size. (3.2mm for an m3 screw?)
I keep getting the "nega" (circle with a slash through it) symbol for my mounting hole, and am not sure whether this means it would not be drilled by the fab shop, or just means I've chosen a size not on Eagle's very limited drill menu.
EAGLE will use a slightly different symbol for each drill size in the menu (which is changeable, BTW.)
And I think it uses the circle/slash for drills not in the menu. But it should be fine anyway, since the CAM files generated will contain the actual drill sizes (which might get modified by the manufacturer. I have my drills choices set to nice even metric values (0.5, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 3.2), while the english defaults seem to be based on ... some other standard (mils? Drill Numbers?) that work out to slightly different values (1.02mm is 40mils, in the sparkfun board. Try the drillegend-stack.ulp) My understanding is that the manufacturer will substitute in their standard drills, within some tolerence factor.
Eagle CAD [based on JLPCB instructions] generated two folders, one called DrillFiles containing a solitary xln file and .. GerberFiles. I had difficulty getting JLCPCB's previewer to visualise the holes -- tried putting the xnl file inside the Gerber folder and then zipping, etc, but couldn't quite figure out what I was supposed to do with it. In the end I zipped both dirs (GerberFiles and DrillFiles) into one zipfile and uploaded that, hoping they can sort it out.
Hmmm. I noticed that the modern instructions are different than for older versions. Usually I just run their provided CAM job and put all the files it generates into a .zip file, but it never created separate directories for me...
Watching their instruction video for the third time I saw that I missed a step: it appears that I have to add Vias manually (darnit).
You shouldn't. Which instruction video are you looking at?
I'll try downloading the new version to a burner PC or VM and see what it looks like...
Hi westfw, thanks for the extensive response. I got close to fabbing a board from your ULP but the fab shop (I tried JLCPCB) rejected my file with the cryptic note
Hi， there is only holes in the board and you select surface finish with HASL. The tin will connect together to cause the short circuit.Please select ENIG if you need to do the board,thanks~
After a lot of googling and timidly asking a stupid question or two on the Eagle CAD forum (where 99 percent of the discussion is miles over my head) I think I've discovered that a board with tightly packed Vias isn't a good candidate for the HASL process, and this is what the fab house was trying to tell me... but since English is their 2nd language and I am vastly ignorant of PCB fab, I had a hard time understanding what they were trying to tell me. At first I thought they were telling me my board had only holes and no pads or vias, and I knew that couldn't be right! So I guess I need to pay a bit more for the ENIG finish. I will regroup and try submitting the ULP proto board design again.
We have strayed far, far from the topic of Arduinos so I probably should stop asking n00by Eagle and PCB questions here at this point; there are other fora for learning about this stuff. I really appreciate your notes (above) though, they will help me get a grip on Eagle CAD (at least the feeble partial grip I need to do the minimal things I would like to do with it). This conversation has opened a door for me to a huge, unsuspected new world -- much appreciated.
Oh, about the instruction video:
It was linked on the JCLBCP web site, in their FAQs: How To Generate Gerber Files.
Hope your NY party was awesome.
PS yes, you can 3d print multilayer PCBs today.
But there's a catch... you have to have $50-100K to buy the printer. Oh well.
I could buy an awful lot of fab-house PCBs for that kind of money
I got close to fabbing a board from your ULP but the fab shop (I tried JLCPCB) rejected my file with the cryptic note
Hi， there is only holes in the board and you select surface finish with HASL. The tin will connect together to cause the short circuit.Please select ENIG if you need to do the board,thanks~
It's nice to get a rejection instead of a set of non-functional boards that they charge you for. I'm somewhat impressed that you get ANY human intervention for the prices they're charging...
I think I've discovered that a board with tightly packed Vias isn't a good candidate for the HASL process
No, it SHOULD be OK. For example, this board worked fine with HASL, and has a prototyping area of similar dimensions (though I don't remember whether I used the ULP for it.)
I think there are two possible explanations:
- It means "We don't want to waste our drill bits drilling all those holes for a protoboard that we already sell through some other channel." (some PCB firms actually put a limit on hole count on their cheap process offers.)
- (more likely) something went wrong in the ULP or CAM export process, and somehow the copper layers didn't get exported properly.
Can you package up the .brd file and the same .zip you sent to JLCPCB and put it someplace where I can check it?
We don't need to stop talking till a moderator says so. And I think we're well within the norms for this sub-forum, anyway...
Try this shared folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_z4CrsEScb2_ZIbEyRBg5I4abWY1KqzV?usp=sharing
or direct link to zipfile
and to brd file
I'm never quite sure how far down sharing goes in google folders...
Well if you think the mods will not object then...
I did find some text online that suggested HASL could be a problem with a lot of small vias (diameter is relevant) because the molten metal could "stick" in the vias reducing their diameter, or even blocking them.
Anyway if you could review the output and let me know if there's something horribly wrong with it, that would be very helpful thanks.
The only mod I made was to draw a perimeter and add 4 mounting holes at the corners.
I think software reviews the board files at JLCPCB, and the human just types a short and cryptic text message. Given their volume and pricing, as you say, even that is surprising.
I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a natural whiz at Eagle -- Eagle CAD only "made sense" to me when using it to view existing designs... the layers were not that different from e.g. GIMP layers or any other layered drawing tool. Designing from scratch (I looked at a few tutes) looks terrifyingly complicated. I probably will never need to do that, though my ambitions are pretty small. I'm working on version 2 of USBcycle, my ongoing project/obsession...
which right now is on hold because I don't have a bb p/s hefty enough to feed the power-hungry Nextion... so I'm waaaaiting on new p/s from Banggood, which (when you combine CP slowdown, holidays, customs, and the container ship schedule) are taking a looooong time to get here. argh.
so in the meantime I'm fussing about with any other details I can resolve, like a solderable proto board that actually fits the bb p/s properly, which is how this thread all started...
The files look OK to me. (There is gerber viewer software for checking...)
I tried JLCPCB again, this time selecting ENIG finish, but I can't get anywhere with their web site now.
Their Gerber preview/checking rejects my zip file. It produces no image, and a long list of errors/complaints.
See screenshot...
I am not sure where to begin. Clearly a bunch of information is missing (at left). Not sure why it thinks the (xln) drill file is not aligned with the rest of the (Gerber) files.
I fed the same zip file to gerber-viewer.com (nifty site) and it looked fine (see 2nd screenshot).
Frustrating!
The files look OK to me. (There is gerber viewer software for checking...)
Ah. Although the files seem to be formatted fine, the names are not at all close to what JLCPCB suggests here.
I don't know whether that's because of new EAGLE versions, or whether it's something you did manually, but it seems that JLCPCB doesn't like it. USUALLY, companies provide a .CAM file, but it looks like they only have instructions (and not terribly consistent instructions, either. The page I linked above says that they'll accept .brd files directly, but that doesn't seem to be the case...
There are a couple of design decisions to think about:
- You get silkscreen on top and bottom layer, it seems a shame not to put SOMETHING there. Row and Column numbers, or maybe just big blank white rectangles where you can scribble with a sharpie...
- I noticed that Adafruit's PermaProto board use quite thin traces between the pads, and only on one side. This permits them to be cut, perhaps enabling more components to be added. My ULP and Sparkfun's board use big thick traces, which are less fragile, but also harder to modify.
- You have room for additional pads in the vertical sections, if you wanted.
Anyway, attached is a .zip file that JLC seems to think is OK...
It looks like:
Archive.zip (54.2 KB)
wow, I totally missed that (the file naming convention).
that zip file almost worked the first time (I was able to get it into the fab queue) so I didn't realise there was a serious problem with it.
I did nothing manual to the files, I wouldn't dare I just did the export procedure as shown in the video. so now all I need is a little bash script to auto-rename them before zipping and uploading. cool! many thanks for pointing out the error.
and thanks for the sample zipfile. I will dl and examine. is it also from your ULP?