Breakout Board Design (submit your ideas)

[Krumlink]

I was thinking (yes I know, what a surprise) and I wanted to make a Robot PCB using the PCB Artist Software (my PCB maker uses it). I was wondering what Ideas people would want on it. It is going to be a 5x5 inch Square board, and If you would like to contribute ideas for it, go ahead and shoot .

Some Starter Ideas:
on board H bridge (using ?)
V Regulator (using ?)

If I can get enough good ideas, maybe I will make a kit

[dknguyen]

5"x5" is pretty big. Personally, I'd shrink the board and have the motor drivers separate since they are so robot dependent. BUt if you really want to stick one on, have at least 2, along with voltage/current sensing, gate drivers, maybe encoder inputs, and probably 5A or greater, since a 5x5" board is probably a fairly large robot anyways.

If you're talking more of a general "control board" for a robot, then forget about all the really robot specific stuff like the H-bridge (get that separately and properly sized to each robot). Something like buffers for the ADC inputs is a must since every uC ADC I've seen requires really low input impedances. An ICD jack, UART-PC level shifter, I2C line extender/driver (for kicks), CAN bus (for kicks also, but if you build other electronics you might want to base all your other circuits around this bus anyways). Really fancy addons are things like 3-axis accelerometer, 2-axis gyros, configurable lowpass filters for the ADCs, temperature sensor. Don't forget to leave the PWM/output compare pins free for controlling servos as well as the input compare pins for measuring input square waves. Math coprocessor perhaps if your uC is weak in that department. Set-and-forget PWM ICs perhaps.

[Krumlink]

Wow, getting some good feedback already

I would like to have it mountable with a Tamyia Gearbox, so you could just mount the board right onto it.

The ICD is a good idea, what PIC would you like to see it using? I was thinking of having the PIC pinned out, then have a small breadboard mounted on it, so you could easily prototype with it. It would have a pre made H Bridge on it, so you would just have to Code N Go!® (I call that phase )

[dknguyen]

I like dsPIC30F4011 or dsPIC30F4013...but that's just me. THere's always the argument of the best part to use is the one that's just good enough to do the job, and not overkill.

[blueroomelectronics]

Krumlink search this site and tell me if they have anything similar to what you want to do.
http://www.pololu.com/

[Krumlink]

Actually, not at all. I will more fully explain my idea later.