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PIPduino

A 'duino especially for putting in projects.

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When I'm done with breadboard prototypes, this is the 'duino I always wanted. No more tedious, hacky perfboard baseboards for Pro Minis. No need for shields.

Each digital and analog pin gets its own VCC and GND. FTDI/Serial connector. There's an I2C bus with multiple connections for sensors and such. The ISP doubles as a SPI port. You can power other boards. Onboard 500mA regulator with proper thermal design. Or power directly through any VCC/GND pair.

I'd love to hear your feedback to make this design even better.

UPDATE:
Thanks for the feedback so far!

These are now available on Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/bot_thoughts/pipduino/

PIPduino looks like an Uno with optiboot bootloader and ATmega328P running at 16MHz with the same kind of crystal resonator on a Pro Mini. 

What sets it apart are the color-coded signal, VCC and GND rails and dedicated peripheral ports (I2C, SPI/ISP, Serial) that I started using on RoverMux and RoverBaseboard.

The current version R0.2 uses an NCP5500 regulator in DPAK package, rated to 500mA. It features reverse protection and thermal overload protection; 230mV dropout voltage; and 16V maximum input. Run it off of ~3.53V or ~5.23V. I did some research on thermal design and implemented improvements. Testing shows  the regulator will put out 500mA at a stable (albeit really high) temperature.

More about power. Flexibility is key with embedding these boards. You can power the board on any of the VCC/GND rails. There's a set of power rails for input or output power. And the FTDI powers the board, too, through a diode so you can do final programming/prototyping on the bench.

R0.2 features some fixes to the FTDI and to the bypass cap for the AREF pin. So far the ADCs are seeing much less noise than in R0.1.

So, I'm pretty close to releasing this thing on the unsuspecting public. Just a bit more testing to see how it works and I think we're good to go.

  • 1 × ATmega328P AVR Microcontroller
  • 1 × NCP5500 LDO regulator with extremely low dropout; reverse and thermal protection

  • Regulator Thermal Test

    shimniok09/10/2014 at 22:30 0 comments

    So, I did some learnin' on thermal design. I modified the PIPduino design to use a different regulator. The board has thermal vias that dump heat into the top ground plane as well as the bottom and fairly wide expanses of copper on the bottom. It seems to work pretty well.

    I ran the regulator above it's maximum rating (9.7 ohm, 5.05V, 520mA) for five minutes with a Vdo > 7V. The hottest spot I could find was 140C (ambient of 22C) and it stayed stable at that temperature. At ~250mA for 5 min the hottest spot was around 92C. I can probably further improve in the next revision.

    Just don't touch the board. It's hotter than the devil's ass on fire under these conditions.

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Boian Mitov wrote 09/12/2017 at 18:00 point

Will be nice to also have a (non pro) version with built in serial USB chip (FTDI etc.) ;-)

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Boian Mitov wrote 09/12/2017 at 17:55 point

Really great board, especially for prototyping and learning to work with microcontrollers.

I started a while ago a "Electronics for Education Initiative" project on Hackaday, and I think this is a great educational resource. I will send you invite, I think it should be listed there :-)

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Craig Hissett wrote 03/09/2016 at 12:19 point

This is a great board - I'm currently working on a project that uses several Arduinos connected to a Pi via i2c to monitor various sensors, and the layout of this board would be perfect. for it.

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shimniok wrote 03/21/2016 at 19:23 point

Thanks! I had a few similar projects that inspired me to design the board.

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Samuel Wittman wrote 09/11/2014 at 19:00 point
How/where did you obtain the colored headers? They look really sharp!

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shimniok wrote 09/12/2014 at 06:36 point
Thanks! I get 'em in bulk from a seller on aliexpress. I tuned into them for my RoverMux and later RoverBaseboard over on Tindie.

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