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Forum Index : PCB Manufacturing : Simple small - with components soldered
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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
I've seen a number of PCB-creating places mentioned but will any solder a few components on? I'm thinking CPU plus its essential parts (e.g. Vcap) on a tiny board. Smallish numbers (tens, maybe hundreds). With a LOW target price per board. John |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9303 |
iTead Studio will assemble boards for you - you have to complete their BOM and price quoting spreadsheet thing, but that would give you an idea of cost. LINK You will need to login before you can use that page, which might require that you register if you have not used them before. That is free. If you only want a few tens of boards and perhaps not hundreds, WhiteWizzard might be able to help you and he is in your neck of the woods....(that being the same country) Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
Thanks! I was prompted partly by Rob's (MX170) DIP comments here . Made me wonder about a sort of bigDIPper (I guess it would have to be bigger than DIP) carrier board that would take any one of a few PIC32 CPUs and then be almost as convenient as a DIP. (Obviously not quite, maybe not close.) Also, that I would not want to solder small parts (I hardly solder at all) so sort of combining Rob's comments and a feeling I'd quite like a cheap tiny board with about the bare minimum of CPU etc on it. I know about some similarish ones are on ebay etc but they cost daft money to my way of thinking and also don't look DIP-alike (bigDIPper isn't a great name). Any ideas? John |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2350 |
you could go for a 40-pin wide-dip (0.6" between rows of pins), with onboard 1455 to handle usb/serial and icsp. but cost of production is always going to be the killer. the only hope for a solution that is cost-competitive with the 28-pin DIP MX170 is to produce something neat and allow the chinese cloners to pick up on it. btw, Grogster has/had a 30-pin wide-dip on the cards, but with all the earthquakes and lightening strikes of late i'm not sure of the status. and WhiteWizzard had his 44-pin wide-dip board with onboard ftdi bridge - i'm not sure how many of these he sold in the end. cheers, rob :-) |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
Thanks. I don't care if cloners grab it - arguably even better as should be cheap! Cost matters (a lot) but clearly can't expect to have a bigger memory chip than MX170 at the same price. I'm just trying to do something like: 1. have a bigger memory than MX170 2. in something DIP-alike as LQFP/QFN etc are not for me (SMD, no thanks) To keep it cheap (and small) I thought the best idea was to leave off everything but the vital stuff. So, Vcap - what else? I didn't know about the 30-pin one but will it be the bare minimum of devices and cheap and pre-soldered? I simply cannot solder SMDs for enough reasons that I'd rather just stick with pre-built boards if need be (and then they won't be PIC32 as they pretty much always just cost too much). I was thinking if this sort of extremely cheap DIP-alike was OK for me then it would be for others. John |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2914 |
GDay John, I am not sure I 100% understand what you really want but I do have two offerings that might be of interest to you. Both are Pic'170 based. If you need more memory Geoffs cut down MMBasic can be loaded into them. My NanoMite, which I believe is the worlds smallest Pic32 board (if not the smallest it is damn small at 15mm x 15mm) and has an SSOP Pic'170 and is designed to plug into a DIP8 IC socket. Then I also have my new (Manual not finished yet, so not officially released) PicoMite, which is the `BIG' brother to the NanoMite at 19mm x 15mm and in a DIP14 package. Preliminary details can be found in this thread on page 9 PicoMite Yes these are both SMD but I currently offer these built up at $15AUS (~ $11US) each. Of course due to the DIP8/14 format compromises have been placed on the available IO. In the case of nM you have 12 IO that are select-able (by solder links options) but only 6 at a time, the other 2 pins are 3v3 and GND. In the case of pM you have 18 IO that are select-able (by solder links options) but only 9 at a time, the other 5 pins are 3v3, GND, Console TX/RX and MCLR. I have one customer who has been using NanoMites and more recently PicoMites for the last 12 months in his art/sculptures embedded into `junked' mobile phones to great effect. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9303 |
Completely in limbo at the moment. I finished the board design with help from other members here(Rob was one of them), and have the prototype boards here, but have not had a chance to build any of them. For me, it is massive lightning-strike damage that I am chasing at the moment and that is taking up pretty much all of my time. We HAVE rebuilt and put many systems back on-line, but now come the intermittents that other members here had told me were coming - and they were right...... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
Thanks (all) It's more memory than the MX170 that I was thinking, due to people not wanting to lose MMBasic features. It was Rob's comments (no DIP PIC32 beyond MX170) that got me thinking that a way to get the good features of DIP is wanted (but not necessarily the exact size) for all those chips Mchp don't make. So, the nanomite & picomite look like "maybe" except that they use the very chip that's too small memory. MMBasic is already struggling to fit in. With Rob mentioning the price of MX170, it'll be tough to compete on that as well. John |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2350 |
perhaps what is required is for someone to grab a copy of the micromite source from geoff, and sit down and do some serious re-factoring of the code. as with any sizable software project, there are always places where savings can be made - en masse these many small savings can mount up to quite a fair chunk. i'm sure if someone submitted a set of edits that reduced the flash footprint by a few 10's of k's (without sacrificing speed) geoff would be happy to look at merging them into his sources. cheers, rob :-) |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
I doubt that's possible even with months of effort. Whereas some way to get past MX170 ought to be fairly easy - I suspect - for someone with the talent to design an adapter board. I suppose if there were more ready-made PIC32 boards and they were cheap maybe they'd do instead. (I can't see price/performance like such as RPi or Pine64, though.) John |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2350 |
that is the one thing that puzzles me with much of the development work we see. the reality is that RPi hardware is really really cheap - consider the cost of a RPi-zero, giving you 512mb of ram, 1ghz processor, 100mA (or thereabouts) of current consumption, HDMI, USB. there is no way any pic32mz solution (chip on a PCB) can compete with this, and for most applications an mx470 is similarly beaten. the mx470 may, however, still have an advantage with a low clock speed to reduce power consumption in some applications. the only place where pic32 hardware makes financial sense is... the MX170 in a dip package consuming a few 10's of mA. cheers, rob :-) |
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| isochronic Guru Joined: 21/01/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 689 |
It is not economic to get a pcb fab to assemble small boards and production runs as setting up is expensive, it is only realistic for large numbers of units. The RPi and siblings rely on a large production base to get the unit cost low. (ed - There are many sold and much publicity - But I don't see many in actual day to day use. ] There tends to be a three stage genre : Start up : Product X is a small simple non-profit device designed to help Educate the Kiddies, eliminate poverty, assist the third world, etc. >>Read : We are claiming education and charity tax breaks to help fund development, and want to swim in $$$. Take off : Product X now has an upmarket version with Special Features and so we are charging for it. >>Read : We got a free linux version running on it and it looks really cool. If you want to develop something for it you will have to buy proprietary software Y, Z to use the hardware enabled screen etc. Coasting: Product X is now an accepted success and so is suitable for government purchase for education programs and UN assistance packages. >>Read : Woo-Hoo !!! We have retired now but call our support line in the third world. Oh, and you need to upgrade ... Many get to the stage where they run linux (slowly), require large resources to even boot, and tend to vanish after a year or two. [ Ok so I'm a little jaded !!  ] |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3797 |
The RPi has sold over 10 million. They do not get tax breaks (UK doesn't have such). They don't sell proprietary software nor do you have to buy any. You may not be seeing them but that must imply something about your country or where you are (or aren't) looking or .... whatever. John |
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