In various discussions here we talked about a “Blank Plank” for quick prototyping. This is just a sketch to get feedback, nothing is finished or set in stone.
Quite often I find a button/switch/LED handy on a protoboard. It saves some time digging through the parts boxes. It’s my thought that these would be pre-populated, and there could of course be a version without.
A general idea of the layout. There are two sets of vertical IO headers.
I struggled a bit with the silkscreen. It shouldn’t be on the proto pattern, so it could go between the horizontal and vertical connectors instead. The pinout is also laser etched on the horizontal header, but it’s nice to have both.
How do you feel about D1 being a two color LED, so depending on polarity of pins 2&3 on J1 it’s either red or green (or yellow on mixed)?
Do you plan on populating at least one of the 10 pin headers? I think having the ability to drag around them (or maybe just the set closest to the proto area) is a good idea.
I haven’t seen the @electronic_eel pattern before, that’s pretty cool and I really like it.
How do you envision that you connect from the 10p connector onto the proto-area? Do you always need a wire for that or wouldn’t it be better if you could directly drag solder across?
I suggest to make the connections marked in green so that you can directly start to drag solder if you want to.
Ground and Vout will be the nets you need to connect to most often. I guess you used the version of my protoboard with the ground plane, so ground is covered.
In contrast to my protoboards that don’t have any pre-assigned nets, the protoplank has a dedicated Vout pin. So how about making that easily available all around the protoarea?
For this you could for example create a pattern that is half my smd pattern to not waste any space. Or use slightly wider spacing to prevent accidental connections while still allowing to directly drag solder across.
You could also prepare footprints for capacitors then. 0603 or 0805. Maybe one above the 10p connector and one on the below. Would improve the cleanliness of the power supply for the circuit.
It looks like the most most common dual color LEDs use a package with 4 pads (independent control of each die). You also noted yellow, so I assume this is what you intended, I’ll update the schematic.
Removed the LEDs and switches for now. Will add back in one power indicator LED and a footprint for a capacitor on VOUT.
VOUT /power supply surrounds the prototyping area. The trace is exposed without mask to give an obvious visual indicator of what is going on. It is also labeled “VOUT” on all sides.
I tried with and without pattern between the second set of IO pins. I think without pattern is better because it gives a stronger visual cue that these are not just more standard vias.
But I’d say there is enough space to add two footprints for capacitors between Vout and GND. This doesn’t really complicate the board in my view, but would improve stabilty of the power supply.
Absolutely. I got hung up on what size to place and thought we could discuss that while a draft version is in production. I wanted to get it sent out while the board house was still processing orders today.
This is for the user to hand-solder, right? Then I like the idea of the overlapping footprints.
If you plan to pre-populate it, the manufacturer will not like it. Too much surface tension could lead to tombstoning if the paste on the pads doesn’t got liquid at the exact same moment.
Maybe some 0805 / 0603 combo? 1206 is a bit extreme for an R and LED.
Not worried about the power. I’m worried that folks with a too hot iron and slow soldering movement might heat it up VOUT trace and melt the nylon screw.
Not super happy with the layout of the D and R. I should have done another row of pattern on the top and bottom.
I think it was good to do a simple one first. Let’s get a feel for this one and then do a revision adds some pre-populated parts like the switch, button, and user LED.
Maybe move the caps to the bottom side, so you have more space for R and LED? But as I wrote, 1206 is huuuge. I’d say you can assume that people who feel comfortable working with a protoboard like this will have smaller Rs and LEDs at hand.
The caps are a different matter, there DC bias plays a big role. At 5V you want 0805 or larger to get sufficient capacitance of a few µF.
