I’ve taken a rather long hiatus from building things—probably the longest in recent memory. For this column, I’m half-stepping back into the design world by looking at a product someone else designed and built—the µduino (micro-duino).
The board I’m looking at may be the world’s smallest Arduino module. I’m a big fan of small electronics. I find it a nice challenge to design things smaller, and with modular electronics, there is an added usability factor to having things small.
Figure 1: Small µduino.
It is not uncommon for us to see customer designs that utilize some form of plug-on compute module. These range from Arduino compatible modules up through high-powered devices like Beagle Bones.
Dropping in a module as the brains for your device can really shorten design time. You don’t have to worry about designing a piece of hardware that has been designed a million times before, and you can take advantage of a lot of software work put together by a huge community of developers.
However, modules are not always practical. One of the reasons I don’t typically use modules in my own designs is that they are usually too big and add in a lot of functionality that I don’t need. Instead, I will design in a “bare metal” PIC microcontroller or add in the basic reference design Arduino compatible circuit. It doesn’t take a lot of time—probably just a few hours or so at this point, but every little bit of time adds up, and the time commitment cascades when it comes time to assemble the device.
Yes, I work for an electronics manufacturer, but like the professional auto mechanic who rebuilds engines for fun at home, I also like to hand build my own boards. I would rather spend my hand assembly time on new chips and sensors and such than another repeat of a microcontroller section. I get tired of the same Atmega and the same set of passives that go into the Arduino circuit.
I recently came across the µduino on Crowd Supply and felt the need to buy a few and see if I might have finally found a viable alternative to always designing in the microcontroller.
Just how small is the µduino? Here's a photo of two of them sitting on top of my YDY (you do you) lapel pin I made for the Open-Source Hardware Conference earlier this year. The YDY board is 1.3” (33 mm) wide and the µduino—a fully functional equivalent to the Arduino Leonardo—is less than half that.
Figure 2: Two µduinos on YDY.
Soldering to something this small is not for the faint of heart or shaky of hands. The µduino has 1-mm pitch through-holes for the I/O connectors. I recommend carefully tinning your leads ahead of time or using solid wire, use flux, a good magnifier and a small iron.
Once you get past the precision soldering, you can start to see the utility of the module. The next photo shows the electronics set for my stepper motor-driven camera mount for star photography. In this case, I used an entire commercial Arduino module, along with a stepper driver breakout board. My hand-wired carrier board is built on an Arduino shield with dual voltage (3V and 5 V) I2C that I designed and built a while back. The LiPoly battery charger board is also of my own design.
Figure 3: Star tracker with µduino.
My next activity will be to redesign the carrier board with the LiPoly charger and power supply integrated. I’ll use the µduino as the brains, so the entire set up will be on one board with a smaller area than just the commercial Arduino alone.
Duane Benson is marketing manager and CTO at Screaming Circuits.
11-11-2020
Duane Benson has taken a rather long hiatus from building things—probably the longest in recent memory. For this column, he half-steps back into the design world by looking at a product someone else designed and built—the µduino (micro-duino).
View Story07-29-2020
Duane Benson recently designed a motion-sensitive lapel pin for the 2020 Open Source Hardware Summit, which was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, here, he shares lessons to learn and reviews more fundamentals from this project.
View Story05-27-2020
While being at home, Duane Benson has been completing what life will be like once all of this is over. While he's excited to get back to the boards sometime, many things will change for the better. Duane shares five ways he sees the working world being different in 2021.
View Story04-22-2020
Some parts just look cooler than others. One of Duane Benson's favorites is the edge mount high-speed RF connector. Unfortunately, "I like the look" doesn't necessarily translate to "it is easy to build." The edge mount connector requires a proper footprint and a match with the PCB thickness, and this is where the datasheet comes in.
View Story03-25-2020
In the best of times, electronics manufacturing is an exercise in taking chaos (in the form of data and information of multiple non-aligned forms and formats) and creating order (in the form of a working PCB). As I write this, the coronavirus has been declared a global pandemic, and the primary theme of the day is uncertainty. Duane Benson shares four things you can do to better ensure that your projects can be built and improve your habits.
View Story02-26-2020
Duane Benson describes the latest board design project he has been working on in his off-hours—a motion-sensitive lapel pin—including compromises, mistakes, and lessons learned
View Story01-08-2020
Depending on your perspective, we are either starting the last year of the old decade or starting the first year of the new decade. But regardless of what you call the decade, a lot of change is in store. Duane Benson shares five of the more significant technological shifts directly ahead of us and how to respond.
View Story12-11-2019
Getting custom electronics manufactured is not cheap, fast, or easy. Fortunately, there are ways to keep costs down and yields up without adding cost. Duane Benson shares six ways to keep costs down and yields up that you can do without a lot of effort.
View Story11-20-2019
Exotic materials have been around for a while, but being “exotic,” most of us could safely ignore them. However, as clock speeds increase, and board sizes decrease, some of those exotic materials are getting close to mainstream. Duane Benson shares some of the newest terminology you might see in your daily electronics adventures and will need to be familiar with when venturing beyond a standard, rigid FR-4 PCB.
View Story10-30-2019
We see orders for a single board, and we see orders for thousands. “A few thousand” falls way outside the realm of “prototype,” but in the startup and open-source worlds, the lines are blurred. Once you order more than about 50 boards, a few things change; for example, you should consider ordering your boards in a panel, also called arrays or a palette, of multiple boards.
View Story09-19-2019
I write a lot of words about DFM and best practices for PCB layout. Working for a manufacturer, I regularly see the results of not taking DFM seriously. DFM is something never to be taken for granted at any point in the design cycle, and I mean at any point in the process.
View Story08-14-2019
Before parts are added, a typical PCB has four ingredients: substrate, metal, solder mask, and silkscreen. Solder mask, in particular, seems to be looked at as a great place to cut when costs are tight, but Duane Benson disagrees. Read on as he dispels five common myths about solder mask.
View Story07-10-2019
A good portion of a quality electronics build is simply the result of clear information. Not long ago, I wrote about the set of files containing the information required by your manufacturing partner to ensure a quality build.
View Story04-18-2019
I recently traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, for a week of beignets, fried food, and urban exploration. It’s a good thing that parts of the exploration came in the form of walking as some level of exercise was needed to compensate for the lack of greens and heavy emphasis on the word “fried” that went along with most of the food.
View Story03-28-2019
Overall, our modern world could not exist without PCBs; they are everywhere, but they aren’t items to be taken for granted. Like most technology, PCBs need proper handling and storage. PCBs don’t last forever and are even more vulnerable before the parts are soldered on. The solderable metal surface is very thin and subject to a number of potential problems, especially if not stored properly.
View Story02-11-2019
Like everything else in the modern world, design decisions can have a pretty big impact on your manufacturing cost. Here's a list of seven design decisions that can make your manufacturing more affordable.
View Story01-17-2019
It's now 2019, and all I'll say on the coming year is that we are in for a wild ride. The last few years have been pretty crazy, and 2019 looks to continue that trend but amped up. While predictions might be fun to muse upon, they really won't help you get your job done. So, here's my top eight pieces of PCB assembly advice for the coming year to make up for that.
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