Saturday, September 02, 2006
Common components for KiCad
I went ahead and created components for the usual sorts of things that we use around here.
Most of the components we ordinarily use are already in KiCad's libraries. These include the 16F628A and the 16F877A. I just hate the serendipitous manner in which they distribute pins on their IC's though, so I went ahead and did them like they are on the data sheets.
We're going to have newbies trying to build these boards and it's confusing enough trying to see what connects to what without some boffin playing 52 card pickup with the pin numbers on the poor okies.
Anyhow, if anybody needs the new library, let me know and I'll email it to you. My server is still down. :-(
BTW, I've already seen the typo with the 16F628A. I called it a 20 pin chip when it is actually an 18. I fixed it but don't want to generate a new sample sheet this evening.
Most of the components we ordinarily use are already in KiCad's libraries. These include the 16F628A and the 16F877A. I just hate the serendipitous manner in which they distribute pins on their IC's though, so I went ahead and did them like they are on the data sheets.
We're going to have newbies trying to build these boards and it's confusing enough trying to see what connects to what without some boffin playing 52 card pickup with the pin numbers on the poor okies.
Anyhow, if anybody needs the new library, let me know and I'll email it to you. My server is still down. :-(
BTW, I've already seen the typo with the 16F628A. I called it a 20 pin chip when it is actually an 18. I fixed it but don't want to generate a new sample sheet this evening.
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According to this thread, a Debian packaged version of Kicad shoul dbe available any day now:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=278581
Probably just in time for when I get back from Vienna :)
I've not even looked into converting the gschem schematics we've already got into Kicad. Again, no time to check that.
Vik :v)
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=278581
Probably just in time for when I get back from Vienna :)
I've not even looked into converting the gschem schematics we've already got into Kicad. Again, no time to check that.
Vik :v)
That's really useful Forrest. KiCAD's a bit of a bugger to install, so I haven't used it since I moved from Fedora (worldwide plague of obesity) to Debian (slim; easy to download just what you want) a month or two ago. If, as Vik says, it gets sorted for Debian that'll make things sweet for me, and I'll use your library to start doing some more schematics.
Should we have a wiki page on what chips to put on a universal RepRap controller board?
Should we have a wiki page on what chips to put on a universal RepRap controller board?
KiCAD's a bit of a bugger to install, so I haven't used it since I moved from Fedora (worldwide plague of obesity) to Debian (slim; easy to download just what you want) a month or two ago.
I don't recall it being any bother at all in Windows XP. Trust me, if it had been I would have remembered.
Should we have a wiki page on what chips to put on a universal RepRap controller board?
Sure, why not? It's not like there are that many kinds.
If there are some chips I've missed just yell and I'll configure them. The thing that I haven't done is to see if what I did works with the PCB generating capabilities of KiCad. That seems to be a bit trickier.
I don't recall it being any bother at all in Windows XP. Trust me, if it had been I would have remembered.
Should we have a wiki page on what chips to put on a universal RepRap controller board?
Sure, why not? It's not like there are that many kinds.
If there are some chips I've missed just yell and I'll configure them. The thing that I haven't done is to see if what I did works with the PCB generating capabilities of KiCad. That seems to be a bit trickier.
I've been using ExpressPCB to do schematics and board design.
I just tried KiCAD. I'm not sure I'll be making an immediate switch; the interface is a bit trickier to use, compared to ExpressPCB. It does have the advantage of being multiplatform and open source, but in my experience, I was creating components, sequences, and boards without reading any docs in about 5 minutes on ExpressPCB, and it took me about an hour to figure out the interface on KiCAD. It also seems to have painting glitches, and User interface glitches. Not the end of the world, especially since it is open source, but for my current purposes, I'll probably stick with ExpressPCB. For now... anyway.
Thanks for the blog entry though.. it seems like this project would be good for the RepRap project in general, especially if some of the quirky stuff can be corrected.
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I just tried KiCAD. I'm not sure I'll be making an immediate switch; the interface is a bit trickier to use, compared to ExpressPCB. It does have the advantage of being multiplatform and open source, but in my experience, I was creating components, sequences, and boards without reading any docs in about 5 minutes on ExpressPCB, and it took me about an hour to figure out the interface on KiCAD. It also seems to have painting glitches, and User interface glitches. Not the end of the world, especially since it is open source, but for my current purposes, I'll probably stick with ExpressPCB. For now... anyway.
Thanks for the blog entry though.. it seems like this project would be good for the RepRap project in general, especially if some of the quirky stuff can be corrected.
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