dauntless89
Well-known member
Hi guys,
About to start on a large project and I could use a couple suggestions.
The prototype will be built as a series of daughterboards linked to a single motherboard containing essentially only the MCU. Essentially everything else will be handled on daughterboards. The daughterboards will be simple solderable breadboards. One objective is to keep the system modular so improvements can be made easily. Due to the complexity of the project, I would like to have all these components drawn up and mapped out in a PCB CAD program to keep things straightforward from a design and troubleshooting perspective. What's the best choice here? I seem to keep seeing Eagle, is there a better choice? Looking for something freeware as this is completely a home-gamer thing. Later on, as kinks are worked out and optimizations are made, I envision designing a PCB from scratch to make this thing smaller and more professional.
Something else I will need for this project are ribbon cables. These will be used for carrying signals from daughterboards to the main MCU. What I'm looking for are ribbon-style cables 6-18" long with generally 4-12 pins in a single row, with female headers with the standard breadboard pitch of .1". I can continue with the Google routine, though if anyone has an off-hand suggestion it would save me some time.
Thanks,
Tony
About to start on a large project and I could use a couple suggestions.
The prototype will be built as a series of daughterboards linked to a single motherboard containing essentially only the MCU. Essentially everything else will be handled on daughterboards. The daughterboards will be simple solderable breadboards. One objective is to keep the system modular so improvements can be made easily. Due to the complexity of the project, I would like to have all these components drawn up and mapped out in a PCB CAD program to keep things straightforward from a design and troubleshooting perspective. What's the best choice here? I seem to keep seeing Eagle, is there a better choice? Looking for something freeware as this is completely a home-gamer thing. Later on, as kinks are worked out and optimizations are made, I envision designing a PCB from scratch to make this thing smaller and more professional.
Something else I will need for this project are ribbon cables. These will be used for carrying signals from daughterboards to the main MCU. What I'm looking for are ribbon-style cables 6-18" long with generally 4-12 pins in a single row, with female headers with the standard breadboard pitch of .1". I can continue with the Google routine, though if anyone has an off-hand suggestion it would save me some time.
Thanks,
Tony