Category: electronics

As part of getting the new workspace space I moved the toxins related to casting and circuit board fabrication out of my apartment. The theory being that the space is semi industrial.

So as a test of the new space I took one of Alex Normans board designs and etched it.

Since the last time I worked with Alex on his designs he has picked up quite a bit and I only spent about 10 minutes getting his eagle files layed out and printed before going to the office. When I got there I realized that I had forgotten the green trf and bon ami but we were still able to get a reasonable etch and the new space has been broken in on the practice side.

Two months ago fellow PARTs person and DorkbotPDXer Mark Gross gave me a $100 gift certificate from Sunstone Circuits from last years PDXBot. Sunstone circuits is a local (oregon) board fabrication company who makes a windows based design to board solution called pcb123.  Since i am Mac based I had been putting off the board design until the last possible minute. I had several ideas which I have been laying out and fabbing by hand and a lot of other things on my plate. I had planned to select a design and work on the boards the week of after the arduno cult indoctrination but after spending the weekend frantically building 27 ftdi based boards and then finding that the design in process needed to be simplified if it was to be unleased on the general public. I instead focused on learning cocoa and leaving any new hardware design on the backburner.  I did spend a few hours redesigning my ftdi based boards and then used that work to make a single purpose board based on the benito 5 programmer that I built and have been developing with monty goodson of bittybot.