Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Orin Eman]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Nick Sayer via time-nuts <
time-nuts@febo.com> wrote:

>
> > On Jun 22, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> >
> > The value, quality, and turn-around from all these places is amazing.
>  In the olden days, one was paying $50 a square inch for a single prototype
> board with 4 week turn-around.
> >
>
> Not to turn this into the “Four Yorkshireman” sketch, but in the olden
> days (which by my reckoning were maybe only 10 years ago) there wasn’t
> reasonable hobbyist access to PCB CAD software either - like EAGLE or
> Altium or KiCad or the like.
>


Easytrax - I used it at least as long ago as 1998 because that's the
copyright date on the boards I had made at AP Circuits.  The boards weren't
cheap, I seem to recall in the order of $100 for a couple of double sided
boards with plated through holes and no solder mask.  Of course, Easytrax
is a DOS program and PCB layout only, but it did the trick.  You can still
make it work under a DOS emulator.  I used to call it 'vi' for PCBs given
the way you gave it commands from the keyboard.  I still remember "pt" for
place track...

I use Eagle now.  It's not much better for PCB layout, but at least it has
the schematic editor.  I've tried KiCad at least twice, but find no
advantage over Eagle and keep going back to the Eagle free version.


>
> When I was a teenager (mid 80s) I tried making my own PCB with clad board,
> an etch resist pen, that nasty brown acid and the smallest drill bit I
> could get my hands on. This was a single-sided board - I had absolutely no
> way to line up a two-sided design even if through-hole plating would have
> been an option (of course, it wouldn’t have). No solder resist, no silk
> screen.
>
> It was a disaster. Even with a drill press I couldn’t line the DIP holes
> up closely enough to mash a chip in without bending the leads to hell and
> gone.
>


BTDT too.  I used a 1/16" drill bit and a hand drill.  I'm sure the drill
bit wandered...  For home etched boards, I now use the MG Chemicals
positive resist boards.  If you have the CAD program print the pads with
the holes when you make the transparency, and hold the board just right
under a drill press, the board will self-center under the drill bit!  I'm
sure the MG Chemicals boards cost more per square inch than the Chinese
suppliers, but I can have a single sided board exposed, etched and drilled
in a couple of hours once I have the design.  If I'm going to home-produce
a board, I design it with two layers, but use the top layer as little as
possible and use wire links for all tracks on the top layer... obviously I
have to be careful where I put tracks on the top layer when doing this.

Orin.
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Bob Camp]

Hi

There are an ever increasing number of places that will do pretty good quick 
turn boards. The fact that 
you can get 4 layer 10x10 cm boards with 4/4 mil rules / 8 mil holes  for < $20 
each delivered in under 
two weeks amazes me.Yes that’s a 10 piece price. Yes it includes framed steel 
stencils. Not so long ago 
your cheapest option would have charged you $300 simply to set up the board (== 
minimum test charge).
The two framed stencils would have cost more than the whole order does now. 

Bob


> On Jun 22, 2016, at 6:14 PM, Nick Sayer via time-nuts  
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jun 22, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
>> 
>> The value, quality, and turn-around from all these places is amazing.   In 
>> the olden days, one was paying $50 a square inch for a single prototype 
>> board with 4 week turn-around. 
>> 
> 
> Not to turn this into the “Four Yorkshireman” sketch, but in the olden days 
> (which by my reckoning were maybe only 10 years ago) there wasn’t reasonable 
> hobbyist access to PCB CAD software either - like EAGLE or Altium or KiCad or 
> the like.
> 
> When I was a teenager (mid 80s) I tried making my own PCB with clad board, an 
> etch resist pen, that nasty brown acid and the smallest drill bit I could get 
> my hands on. This was a single-sided board - I had absolutely no way to line 
> up a two-sided design even if through-hole plating would have been an option 
> (of course, it wouldn’t have). No solder resist, no silk screen.
> 
> It was a disaster. Even with a drill press I couldn’t line the DIP holes up 
> closely enough to mash a chip in without bending the leads to hell and gone.
> 
> It was that - and seeing the arrival of surface mount - that convinced me at 
> the time that there was no future for hobbyist electronic design and 
> creation. I dove with both feet into a career in software engineering.
> 
> I had no clue that all I had to do was wait 20 years.
> 
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Clint Jay]

Life is so much easier now,  dirtypcb is a great service,  I have a pile of
boards here from them which are far greater quality than anything I could
hope to produce at home or even in the lab I used to have.  They're also
better quality than any of the local board houses I used in the past.

Having said that,  I did hand manufacture fifty single sided boards from
photo laminate to completed product in one weekend using a Dremel drill
press for somewhere around four thousand holes and hand soldering every
component so it was definitely possible
On 23 Jun 2016 00:01, "Nick Sayer via time-nuts"  wrote:

>
> > On Jun 22, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> >
> > The value, quality, and turn-around from all these places is amazing.
>  In the olden days, one was paying $50 a square inch for a single prototype
> board with 4 week turn-around.
> >
>
> Not to turn this into the “Four Yorkshireman” sketch, but in the olden
> days (which by my reckoning were maybe only 10 years ago) there wasn’t
> reasonable hobbyist access to PCB CAD software either - like EAGLE or
> Altium or KiCad or the like.
>
> When I was a teenager (mid 80s) I tried making my own PCB with clad board,
> an etch resist pen, that nasty brown acid and the smallest drill bit I
> could get my hands on. This was a single-sided board - I had absolutely no
> way to line up a two-sided design even if through-hole plating would have
> been an option (of course, it wouldn’t have). No solder resist, no silk
> screen.
>
> It was a disaster. Even with a drill press I couldn’t line the DIP holes
> up closely enough to mash a chip in without bending the leads to hell and
> gone.
>
> It was that - and seeing the arrival of surface mount - that convinced me
> at the time that there was no future for hobbyist electronic design and
> creation. I dove with both feet into a career in software engineering.
>
> I had no clue that all I had to do was wait 20 years.
>
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>
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Nick Sayer via time-nuts]

> On Jun 22, 2016, at 1:33 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> 
> The value, quality, and turn-around from all these places is amazing.   In 
> the olden days, one was paying $50 a square inch for a single prototype board 
> with 4 week turn-around. 
> 

Not to turn this into the “Four Yorkshireman” sketch, but in the olden days 
(which by my reckoning were maybe only 10 years ago) there wasn’t reasonable 
hobbyist access to PCB CAD software either - like EAGLE or Altium or KiCad or 
the like.

When I was a teenager (mid 80s) I tried making my own PCB with clad board, an 
etch resist pen, that nasty brown acid and the smallest drill bit I could get 
my hands on. This was a single-sided board - I had absolutely no way to line up 
a two-sided design even if through-hole plating would have been an option (of 
course, it wouldn’t have). No solder resist, no silk screen.

It was a disaster. Even with a drill press I couldn’t line the DIP holes up 
closely enough to mash a chip in without bending the leads to hell and gone.

It was that - and seeing the arrival of surface mount - that convinced me at 
the time that there was no future for hobbyist electronic design and creation. 
I dove with both feet into a career in software engineering.

I had no clue that all I had to do was wait 20 years.

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[time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Mark Sims]

Yes,  I always  do a cost/benefit check when ordering boards.  For small boards 
(say less than 4-6 sq inches) when I need three or less, OSHPARK is pretty much 
always the way to go.  For larger boards / quantities,  Dirty PCBs (or 
gojgo.com) come out ahead... even with DHL express shipping.  With express 
shipping, gojgo.com gets boards in my hands in eight days... faster than 
OSHPARK.  You can pay all three places quite a bit extra to shave a couple of 
days off the fab time.  

I seem to be using OSHPARK less and less.  It seems I always wind up wanting 
more than three boards even for what was planned to be a one-off build.

Also,  I just got an email from OSHSTENCILS.com   They now do 4 mil stainless 
steel stencils for around $1.25 per sq/inch.  If your board uses devices with 
teeny-weenie features,  stainless works better than Kapton (better paste 
release properties), plus has no wear-out / tearing issues.  I have a desktop 
mill with a 405nm 1W laser and usually cut my own stencils out of red vellum 
paper.  The kerf size is in the 10 micron range... it does not cut Kapton well, 
or stainless at all.

The value, quality, and turn-around from all these places is amazing.   In the 
olden days, one was paying $50 a square inch for a single prototype board with 
4 week turn-around. 

  
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Nick Sayer via time-nuts]

This may be too far off-topic, but I’ve used both Dirty and OSHPark. For U.S. 
based folks, Dirty sounds like a better value proposition than OSH, but for 
most of us, it doesn’t really work that way:

1. If you are building one thing, getting 10 vs 3 boards doesn’t add value.
2. To actually get the boards in-hand in the same amount of time, you have to 
spend $25 or so for DHL shipping.
3. To get ENIG you have to pay extra. ENIG may not be necessary, but I always 
get it when I have either button battery holders or switch contacts or 
non-soldered edge connections or the like on the board. ENIG is standard from 
OSHPark.

If you’re buying a *pile* of a particular board, Dirty is better:

1. They do ETesting. That said, I have gotten one board back from Dirty that 
had a short. I’ve gotten bad boards back from OSHPark too, and I don’t have 
statistics to make any real comparisons. It’s exceedingly rare from both.
2. They offer different solder mask colors.
3. Their volume pricing deals are better and more flexible.

But watch out for one thing - Dirty will add an order tracking number to your 
silkscreen. Normally, I don’t care, but I once made a batch of chassis panels 
and pretty sort of mattered in that instance.

> On Jun 20, 2016, at 7:44 PM, Mark Sims  wrote:
> 
> I also put my RS-232 / GPS interface board on Dirty PCBs... again you get 10 
> or so boards for $25.
> http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=22495=295e19bd6cd8f6cc2f421761743cb695
> 
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[time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Mark Sims]

I also put my RS-232 / GPS interface board on Dirty PCBs... again you get 10 or 
so boards for $25.
http://dirtypcbs.com/view.php?share=22495=295e19bd6cd8f6cc2f421761743cb695
  
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Attila!

First, my apologes for getting this thread started.  I misunderstood
Mark's design to have USB, when in fact it did not.  Late night brain
fart.  So any USB discussion is unrelated to his work.

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:49:17 +0200
Attila Kinali  wrote:

> Of the devices you mentioned above, all are USB2.0, but only
> the FT2232H and the FT4232H are HS, the FT232R is FS only.
> Ie, while the FT2232H and the FT4232H support transfer speeds
> up to 12MByte/s, the FT232R supports only 3Mbyte/s
> (Rule of thumb: if the FTDI serial chip's name doesn't contain
> a H, it's most likely not a HS device)

I 100% agree with Attila.  The problem is all USB 1.1 devices are by
definition USB 2.0 Compliant.  So in a sense Herbet is right.  He is
corectly reading the marketing literature that says "USB 2.0".  

But, I refuse to say a device is USB 2.0 unless it actually does
something that is in the USB 2.0 spec and not the USB 1.1 spec.  That
usually mean High Speed instead of Full Speed.

I know that PPS over USB is laughable to a time-nut, but to me the
approximately 8x improvement in precision is very noticeable for
any host (laptop/desktop) unlucky enough to not have a real serial port

Full Speed is polled about every 1 milliSec, High speed is polled about
every 125 microSec.  A real serial port can get down to a microSec, or
better, and of course even that is laughable to most of you guys, but I'm
looking more mass market.

Once again, sorry to start the confusion...

RGDS
GARY
---
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588


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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Attila Kinali]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:39:35 +0200
Herbert Poetzl  wrote:

> > I am not aware of any USB 2 UART devices (that doesn’t
> > necessarily mean much). They just don’t need to be that fast.
> 
> All modern FTDIs are USB 2.0 (for example the FT232R,
> FT2232H and FT4232H) because they also allow for other
> types of data transfer besides the UART which require
> USB 2.0.

This is not completely correct. The main difference between
USB1.1 and USB2.0 are (small) changes in the descriptor tables
and the introduction of HighSpeed transfer speed (aka HS aka 480Mbit/s,
or what most people call USB2.0). No additonal data transfer type was
added, as the three available (Bulk, Interrupt and Isochronus)
were sufficient. None of these changes have anything to
do with what kind of device types (UART is just a device type)
are possible. There are plenty of UARTS that are USB1.1.

Most devices these days will be USB2.0 conform. Meaning that
their descriptor tables will follow the changed layout from
the new standard. It does not mean that they are HS devices.
Actually most I have encountered are still FullSpeed (aka FS aka 12Mbit/s)
devices. There are some HS UART's though, FTDI selling some of them.

The maximum transfer speed a HS device can achieve with
bulk transfers is 35MByte/s (due to overhead in the protocol
and reserved time slots). But only if the devices is done in
an intelligent way and is able to transfer the data in blocks
of 512byte. If smaller blocks are used, then the data rate
scales down accordingly.

Of the devices you mentioned above, all are USB2.0, but only
the FT2232H and the FT4232H are HS, the FT232R is FS only.
Ie, while the FT2232H and the FT4232H support transfer speeds
up to 12MByte/s, the FT232R supports only 3Mbyte/s
(Rule of thumb: if the FTDI serial chip's name doesn't contain
a H, it's most likely not a HS device)

Attila Kinali

-- 
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Herbert Poetzl]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 07:19:54AM -0700, Nick Sayer via time-nuts wrote:
> That’s not a USB chip, it’s an RS-232 level converter.

> I am not aware of any USB 2 UART devices (that doesn’t
> necessarily mean much). They just don’t need to be that fast.

All modern FTDIs are USB 2.0 (for example the FT232R,
FT2232H and FT4232H) because they also allow for other
types of data transfer besides the UART which require
USB 2.0.

Best,
Herbert

>> On Jun 13, 2016, at 11:53 PM, Gary E. Miller  wrote:

>> Yo Mark!

>> On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:53:10 +
>> Mark Sims  wrote:

>>> The 1PPS signal is
>>> routed to the RS-232 connector via the MAX232A, 

>> Why did you use a USB 1.1 chip instead of a USB 2.0 chip?  The PPS
>> performance is much better with the Hi Speed chips.

>> RGDS
>> GARY
>> ---
>> Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
>>  g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Nick Sayer via time-nuts]

That’s not a USB chip, it’s an RS-232 level converter.

I am not aware of any USB 2 UART devices (that doesn’t necessarily mean much). 
They just don’t need to be that fast.

> On Jun 13, 2016, at 11:53 PM, Gary E. Miller  wrote:
> 
> Yo Mark!
> 
> On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:53:10 +
> Mark Sims  wrote:
> 
>> The 1PPS signal is
>> routed to the RS-232 connector via the MAX232A, 
> 
> Why did you use a USB 1.1 chip instead of a USB 2.0 chip?  The PPS
> performance is much better with the Hi Speed chips.
> 
> RGDS
> GARY
> ---
> Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
>   g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588
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[time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Mark Sims]

No USB on that board.  It is genuine hardware RS-232 via a DB9 connector.   No 
USB latency if your hardware supports it.  It does route the the PPS to the 
connector at RS-232 levels so you do have a propagation delay through the level 
shifters.  I tend to use real RS-232 interfaces instead of USB because 
micro-controllers have much better (and easier) support for it... plus I live 
in the Land of the Obsolete...  Also the board can be used as a general RS-232 
level shifter for other projects...  

I added the ATTINY pads for making a device  with a 10 degree of freedom IMU 
board...   I use the low order bits from the noisy readings of the MEMS IMU 
sensors to generate cryptographically secure true random numbers.The 
numbers that it generates pass all statistics tests for randomness.  Plus  the 
IMU can detect movement of and tampering with the device and generate an alarm.


  
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Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Mark!

On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:53:10 +
Mark Sims  wrote:

> The 1PPS signal is
> routed to the RS-232 connector via the MAX232A, 

Why did you use a USB 1.1 chip instead of a USB 2.0 chip?  The PPS
performance is much better with the Hi Speed chips.

RGDS
GARY
---
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
g...@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588


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[time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board

[Mark Sims]

I have put my RS232 adapter board for GPS modules up on OSHPARK's shared 
projects page. 

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/YPvKgMYa

It has connectors and holes for the Adafruit Ultimate GPS,  Trimble Resolution 
T timing receivers,  and generic (Vcc/Gnd/Tx/Rx) devices (like the popular 
Ublox NEO-6M based Crius CN06). The 1PPS signal is routed to the RS-232 
connector via the MAX232A,  polarity is selectable.  There is a small 
prototyping area including an 8-pin DIP for a ATTINY CPU, etc.  GPS/MAX232A 
power can come from an on-board regulator or the DC IN jack.

Note:  use a MAX232A chip with 0.47uF caps, not the CP3232 marked on the 
silkscreen...  CP3232's are way too picky about their caps.

  
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