Sunday, March 17, 2013

Pepita Board soon to be a reality

Pepita V1
A few weeks ago decided to get some experience under my belt on PCB designing. So I just decided to build a variation of the Metaboard. All began with the name, for that I turned to my wife and asked for a name. Without any hesitation she said "We shall call it Pepita", so Pepita it is then.

Pepita Goals:
1. Create a multipurpose micro-controller board with an Atmega328.
2. Cheap
3. Get the experience of PCB designing.

Pepita Challenge:
1. Make it fit on a 5cm x 5cm board. (cheapest size).

As you may see, this board will not make any revolution but for me it is a needed step.
I do not create here any tutorial, cause I just sent it out for manufacturing. Still I do not know how many mistakes I made or what could be better designed. Probably in two months or what ever it takes to get back to me I will know.
Anyhow, I post here the link of the Eagle Cad schematic and board files.

Schematic pepita.sch
Board Files pepita.brd

Hope to write something once I get the actual board and post some successful pictures of it.
If you want to build something, make up your mind and do it. No need to wait for everything to be perfect, if you keep waiting it will never get done. Like the comercial, just do it!

Here is a short video of the board after it came back from manufacturing.
There are no surface mount components, so far so good. It is working great, and I am continuing adding code and devices to it, just to expore the posibilities.