Saturday, July 16, 2011

What is "Minimalduino"?

I started working on the "minimalduino" design as...
  1. a minimal hardware design for an Arduino-compatible board. At heart, it is very similar to the Dorkboard, but
  2. designed to match the form factor of the "official" Arduino boards so users can benefit from the many, many shield boards designed to fit on top. While (awesome) boards like EMSL's Diavolino are also low-cost and shield-friendly, I wanted to explore
  3. optional hardware configurations, with different power connector options (pin headers, JST connector, barrel jack, screw terminals, or mini USB jack), 5V and 3.3V power regulation and optional voltage switching and regulator bypassing, and options for crystal and caps or a resonator. I also wanted to have
  4. better shield-friendliness by placing LEDs (power and D13) and the reset switch (side switch or top switch) at the edges of the board, and lastly, I wanted the board to be
  5. single-sided, home-etchable with wide traces and minimal jumper wires. There is still work to be done to reduce jumpers, but it improves on the the S3V3 "Severino" board which doesn't match up size-wise (it's bigger), the standoff mounts don't match, and it uses a DB9 serial connector instead of the now widespread FTDI USB-serial breakout cable.

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