Main PCB V3 is finished!

[EvilDragon]

After spending hours and hours and hours of time, Nikolaus finished V3 of the main PCB.

That PCB will be produced during this week and it will be ready for the Gamescom

It's almost the final main PCB revision and will be used to test all functions and find any remaining bugs.

If all goes well, V4 will be the one that is going to be used for the main production!

If you want to see the amount of traces needed to create that PCB... go ahead

(of course, when you are working on it, you don't need to see all traces at once )



And if you want to see what's taking so long to design such a PCB... how to puzzle a PCB together, so that no traces get in the way of others.

Here is a small video. It's running at 10x speed - so you can imagine how much exhausting work this is!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yvm2AiM4F5Q?feature=oembed

Next for Nikolaus is to continue to work on the LCD drivers, so we can finally choose the LCD as well.

And what have I been doing?

After I got back from Montpellier, I started to work on multiple things at once.

T-Shirts and other merchandisings, soon to be available from my shop (probably sometimes August).

Preparing Gamescom, upgrading the server (yep, we moved to a completely new server - with only 30 minutes downtime).

And next up is setting up some GIT / Bugtracker-combined system so we can actively work on the OS and Kernel.

I need more time

Well, I hope I'll see as many of you on the GamesCom as possible!

And as usual: As soon as I've got more to post, I'll do that

 

[Silent-Hunter]

This is good!

 

[matzesu]

This is the PCB where the SD Card Readers, and the Keyboard is, right??


Good to hear its finished,


But what about the CPU PCB??


This could be a bit more divicult than the Main PCB because it have lot more layers..

 

[TeDaDeS]

Good news!

Have tickets ready for gamescom so will be there.

Also congratulations in case you like football (you posted during the match, so guessing your neutral )

 

[EvilDragon]

This is the PCB where the SD Card Readers, and the Keyboard is, right??


Good to hear its finished,


But what about the CPU PCB??


This could be a bit more divicult than the Main PCB because it have lot more layers..

A lot of the CPU PCB has been designed already as well.

However, it's not necessarily as difficult - more layers make your life more easy.

The Main PCB was so difficult because we wanted to keep the layers as little as possible (saves a lot of costs).

There are a given amount of traces you need.

And these traces should not interfere each other and have other technical needs as well (i.e. a maximum length from one component to the next one).

Doing this with multiple layers is easy - as you can simply move your traces to a different layer.

But with ONE layer, this is a lot harder.

So basically:

For the same amount of traces, adding another layer makes things more easy.

 (you posted during the match, so guessing your neutral )

That is correct

 

[urjaman]

I was mostly just drooling over that EAGLE Professional at the end ...

 

[comradekingu]

Wow, nice work )))

Didnt even know the pick-and-placer could rotate things. (Thinking of the chip in between the USB ports).

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, if an 2 layer PCB already looks that complex in X-ray mode, how will then the SoC daughter PCB with it's 6-10 layers look if all layers are visible.   h34r:  When it's ready, you need to post pictures of that too of course.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Great !

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

For curiosity: How many layers the Pandora have?

 

[levi]

Awesome! Hopefully this will enable testing of the wifi and audio performance to make sure everything's working as it should be.

 

[fusion_power]

For curiosity: How many layers the Pandora have?

~8 afaik if I remember correctly. Pandora has a pretty complex PCB.

 

[rSl]

woohoo, good news!


the pcb looks awesome!

 

[Majin Wamu]

...My expression from watching that video...it sure blew me away. Awesome work guys!

 

[cuetzpalin]

I'd love to buy a t-shirt with that design.

 

[Zink]

Wow, you are using EAGLE for this...

You know that with Altium Designer the design process (of both PCB and schematic) would be at least 3 times faster? Altium is more than 3 times more expensive though, but it's worth it.

 

[thatgui]

Great to hear that a big milestone has almost been reached.

May I ask what big component lies directly on the right side of the board (left side on the picture), in between those two green '+' markers ?

 

[turbochop]

Maybe it's the 3g module. If I remember correctly, 3g must be placed on the edge, am I right?

 

[PowerGod]

Cool news !! and interesting video

 

[thatgui]

Maybe it's the 3g module. If I remember correctly, 3g must be placed on the edge, am I right?

Would make sense > depending on what you define as "module". Afaik the big chip on the right side of it should be responsible for actually doing the mobile magic, while the "filled rectangle" could be the antenna.