Due to popular demand, here's a short update. ;)
I've more or less abandoned Fritzing.
For designing small circuits the program was fine, but the software became quite slow and unresponsive once the number of components increased. The program is nice, but needs maturing and it's officially not out of beta yet, so I'll hold no grudge. :)
I have since reached out to the good folks at Diptrace, who nicely enough supplied me with a non-profit license that allows me to build the board(s) I inteded. Very nice! I will most likely build a main board and a power board (I/O board, if you wish). That allows me to swap or update and avoid creating a totally new board in case of disasters...
On top of that, I've learned that the I/O pins on Chipkit Max32 are heavily shared, so I've needed to come up with some voodoo to make it all work out with the aid of I/O extenders. I've ordered a bunch of IC's to properly test this before designing the circuit based on the new circuits, including buffers, EEPROM, darlington transistor arrays and resistor networks. All fun and new components!
So, that's that for now...
Until next time - game on!
good choice. I use diptrace. so easy to design pcb. if you have questions let me know! Ive made my own pic32 boards (pic32 breakout is super super easy, crystal, couple of caps. done!)
ReplyDeleteYes, I like it very much so far!
DeleteIt was the #1 contender before Fritzing, but I hit the 300 pin roof almost immediately... But now I've got at least 500 pins to play with and I *think* that should be enough with a little black magic, hehe.
I did notice you were using Diptrace as well, read it on your blog. Very nice looking PCB's too! :)
The problem isn't really the breakout, it's the soldering. I'm looking to solder it myself and basically all surface mounted circuits are off limits for me!
good choice. I use diptrace. so easy to design pcb. if you have questions let me know! Ive made my own pic32 boards (pic32 breakout is super super easy, crystal, couple of caps. done!)
ReplyDelete