Oliver Dain said:
For the lazy, is there is a service to which one can submit the output
from software like Eagle and get a board made and mailed for a
reasonable price?
This summer I have worked on my first wholly owned electronics design
project.
I used CadSoft's EAGLE, and I like it a lot.
I shipped EAGLE files off to Olimex according to the instructions on
their web site. They emailed a .pdf of a fax form, and required that
I sign it and FAX it back.
Money quietly moved from my credit card to them, and boards quietly
arrived at my house. It was professional. It was satisfying. I
never had that post purchase let-down, though there was a missing week
spent in customs. Now I am am an international player.
Now, these are my first boards and my judgement is biased, but they
were beautiful. They're still beautiful. I think the process of
learning EAGLE and making the board was far preferable to wiring the
circuit up on a breadboard. And even though, or perhaps because, I am
a chemist, I wouldn't even consider etching at home.
Also, I bought a board from someone who published in Nuts & Volts a
couple of years ago. Power and ground were shorted on that board. I
didn't really care, because I just wanted to see and hold a board in
preparation of my project, but the fact that they said their board
house was crummy, and Olimex worked perfectly for me, has made me a
little cautious about looking for references -- don't go just with
price. Drop a prospective supplier an email, and if you're not really
happy with the tone and response time, remember that it doesn't get
better after they have your money.
One advice: occasionally drop in a pair of vias 0.100" apart, so you
can cut traces, or solder in wire-wrap wire, or touch a probe tip. It
IS a prototype, right? Just keep ease of debugging and modification
in mind.
These boards have served their purpose well. I have programmed the
PIC, made some decisions about the circuit. Now that the circuit is
connected to power, programmer, daughter boards, and comm lines, I can
see how some connectors should really go on another side of the board.
Stuff that would have escaped me if I had breadboarded it. And it is
tidy. I would have had a mountain of wire on the breadboard.
One of the regulars here pointed out to me that my design wasn't
finished until I had manufacturer's part numbers. I was grumpy, but
he was right. A Mouser web page was mighty handy.
....
I have now modified the board, since all of the worrisom aspects of
the software have been proven on the Rev. 1 prototype. I sent the
Rev. 2 prototype boards back to Olimex yesterday. There are
differences in hardware, and will need changes in software, but the
confidence level at this point is very high and probably justified.
I have been into the libraries, and made custom parts there. For
example, I have made a 'PIC-Hobby' pad layout that gives an extra row
of pads adjacent to the PIC-16F877, so that hobbiest can make more
modifications to my board. I also changed the silkscreen layers to
the 10mil that Olimex wants (they will fix it for $5, but as I am
McIntosh I chose to spend $500 of time to avoid the charge)