Prototype boards for the QuickStart
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,395
Hello,
David Carrier produced some prototype boards for the QuickStart and they arrived today. He made several styles and I was able to thieve the one I liked the most. The favored style is able to cover the QuickStart or hang off the top by flipping the board over.
Didn't take long before I hooked one up to a Power-Sonic 6V battery. The PS-610 fits perfectly underneath the QuickStart and provides 1.1 Amp Hours. I still like SLA batteries because they're easy to charge with a power supply and really cost-effective. And in this case I want to use it for an XBee-based robot controller so a full day's worth of current draw is significant [at least the way I program].
I couldn't resist just taking a look at how things might fit together.
And if you want to use the same SLA battery for your project.
We'll provide these boards with a header for a couple of bucks, cheap enough that we can eat them for lunch.
Okay, I've got to go to bed because I have to work tomorrow, early in the morning.
Ken Gracey
David Carrier produced some prototype boards for the QuickStart and they arrived today. He made several styles and I was able to thieve the one I liked the most. The favored style is able to cover the QuickStart or hang off the top by flipping the board over.
Didn't take long before I hooked one up to a Power-Sonic 6V battery. The PS-610 fits perfectly underneath the QuickStart and provides 1.1 Amp Hours. I still like SLA batteries because they're easy to charge with a power supply and really cost-effective. And in this case I want to use it for an XBee-based robot controller so a full day's worth of current draw is significant [at least the way I program].
I couldn't resist just taking a look at how things might fit together.
And if you want to use the same SLA battery for your project.
We'll provide these boards with a header for a couple of bucks, cheap enough that we can eat them for lunch.
Okay, I've got to go to bed because I have to work tomorrow, early in the morning.
Ken Gracey
800 x 600 - 192K
800 x 600 - 173K
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800 x 600 - 140K
Comments
Oh, Fearless Leader, Grand Most High Eminence -
"...have to work..." ?, nay I say instead "...get the opportunity to create..." is a better perspective
-Matt
Wonderful! You've become a member of the Subservient Robot Team (SRT) at Parallax. Sounded great yesterday but I think I better summon the full sortie of SRTs to return to the Rocklin home base for immediate firmware upgrade!
And today there shall be little or no work accomplished near me after all; I'll be monkeying around with the quadcopter project until I am summoned by my immediate Grand Most High Eminence for bathroom cleaning.
Ken Gracey
Al
Hey Al - you're asking about the spacer height between the QuickStart board and the prototype board, right? If so, these are 1/2" spacers though David specified 7/16" to be exact. If you're asking about the distance from the head of the screw to the holes, it's pretty close with a 0.1" spacing in between.
Ken
Thanks for the reply. But I (once again) need to make myself clearer. If you look at your 3rd picture above - the one with the two boards on standoffs above the SLA battery. Now look in the upper left corner of the protoboard. There is a trace labelled VSS. Follow that to the connector holes. These holes appear to my eyes to be a half space (0.05") off in the left-right direction from the solder holes on the main part of the protoboard. Did I get it that time?
Al
Aha. Gotcha. That's correct. The header + the dual row beneath it is a half-hole shifted off from the field of through-holes.
Ken Gracey
Thanks for verifying that.
Al
Is there any change the holes could be shifted so that everything lines up on 0.1" centers? It may mean a loss of a row of holes, but it does make lining things up with other boards easier.
There's this quickstart deal and now these prototype boards.
I think I remember reading a statement/s only a few months ago to the effect that the idea was to go with the Gadget Gangster platform as the standard "consumer product", re-affirming Nick/GG's situation and so on, and that the intent was for pros to have access to these quickstarts and at a cost outside the onerous procurement process (keeping at an OK for petty cash price), the province of Parallax Semiconductor and not to become the de-facto reference.
It's probably my unique (mis-)perception, but is the quickstart to supplant the GG platform? Whereas there had been a lot of congratulatory flutter with the GG effort, now a lot of folks have gone round the bend for this quickstart deal.
The distinction between Parallax Semiconductor and the Propeller Forum seem/seemed clear enough, but there's some blurring between the two, at least to me.
What's the breakdown, Ken Gracey?