Puma board for FreeEMS

[nitrousnrg]

Project renamed!
And because of that renaming, the repo has moved to the following link:
https://github.com/nitrousnrg/puma

Filenames has been changed, schematic title too.

Its a good time to speak up if something is wrong, right now I have a fresh knowledge about how to change these things and that fresh knowledge won't last for long.

[Fred]

Its a good time to speak up if something is wrong, right now I have a fresh knowledge about how to change these things and that fresh knowledge won't last for long.

DOCUMENT it in another thread! Please :-) If you have time, etc etc.

Puma! I like it :-)

Fred.

[jharvey]

Its a good time to speak up if something is wrong, right now I have a fresh knowledge about how to change these things and that fresh knowledge won't last for long.

I don't know if it's wrong or not, but I see three branches, it appears the first branch is the one your currently working with. Perhaps the other two aren't needed.

On the schematic, I've noticed a couple other minor things. On the CPU page, I see ft232.sch has a sheet name of Sheet4CB8DC30, perhaps that should be called FT232, or similar. On ft232.sch I see a couple blue x NC just floating around.

I don't consider any of the above all that critical, shed color as far as I'm concerned, but I figured I'd toss the critique out there. Keep up the good work.

[nitrousnrg]

I have the master branch, and the FreeEMS_1.0_hardwarew_AR branch, I don't see the third one. I want to move to the master branch, but I'll do a little research before. I think merging the branches can be troublesome.

Thanks, I added a name to the sheet, but I didn't see the No Connect flags there. That should appear in the DRC, which is busy whining about the pile of 'undefined' cpu pins. I've to put bidirectional instead of undefined; I thought the DRC wouldn't complain anymore but I was wrong.

[Fred]

Do you need anything from the branch you're not currently using? If not, you can just blow it away, or rewind it and fast forward on top of it. You can also do the merge with a "keep mine" strategy which throws away the other branch. I don't understand why you have two branches. In any case, merging with git = miles easier than merging with anything else. You'll only get any trouble if you've been working on both branches at the same time in different ways. If you need a hand, I can ssh into your box and help as I've done with Sean in the past. Just let me know.

Fred.

[jharvey]

I didn't see the No Connect flags there.

I'll try to remember to take a snap shot of my screen to show what I'm talking about. I'm not to worried about it. It doesn't change the layout or anything significant. What I should do is fork your copy, then make the changes and recommend a pull. I'll try to get around to it some time, but that's a ways down the road at the moment.

How long until you iron out the silk screen? I think that's the last major obstical before you have one made, right?

[nitrousnrg]

How long until you iron out the silk screen?

I'm working on it. I've put some ground planes in the upper layer, connected to the bottom layer through many vias. Those planes are under the cpu, cpu regulator, and stepper driver. I could put more vias, though.

You said you have some comments about the silkscreen. So far I've moved some references around, dodging vias and drawings. What I don't know what to do is with references of small components, like all the 0805 resistors and capacitors. All those references were drawn over the pads, which is not good.

I think that's the last major obstical before you have one made, right?

Maybe. I still want to try the injector driver on a breadboard, since digikey didn't had the recommended transistor for that driver. I have to try a few bjt I have around. If I don't get a low Z injector or a ~3ohm coil, no problem, I'll send the board as it is.
Lately, I've been finding most of the circuits over the internet, so I won't mind if I send the pcb to manufacture without testing them.
The shutdown circuit probably won't be populated in the protoype, I can't find a reasonable fet/bjt/igbt for it. Its like living in the far west, I could spend all morning trying to buy a 1N4148, or a 100pF capacitor.

Do you need anything from the branch you're not currently using?

No.
I'd like a clean merge. Nothing has been done in the master branch, but I've been working on FreeEMS_1.0hardware_AR, and I want to be working on master. I believe this isn't complex, but I have no idea about how to proceed.
Here is the graph: https://github.com/nitrousnrg/puma/network

[Fred]

git checkout master
git merge FreeEMS_1.0hardware_AR

It should say "fast forward" and a bunch of stuff should spew down the screen.

Note down the head hash before you do it so you can do a git reset --hard <old head hash> afterwards to revert.

Fred.

[Fred]

Or, if you don't have a master you can simply go "git checkout -b master" :-)

You could also go

git branch -d master
git checkout -b master

Which will have the same effect. You can remove the old branch with git branch -d too. I just forked your current stuff, so if you screw up, I have a copy ;-) I <3 git.

Your project is effectively a fork of Jareds, so you're unlikely to merge things back in from each other, except possibly cherry picking parts libraries etc, I guess. Keeping the old branch doesn't hurt, anyway. You could roll it back to the beginning and keep it as Jared's fork. Or you could fork and check his out seperately now that they have unique names.

Fred.

[Fred]

If your testing goes well, I'll build one of those too.

Build a BDM? I think I saw somewhere an Adapt board acting as a BDM interface. I can't find that page now, though.

Yes, weren't you building one? What are the details? Can you post another thread on that somewhere? A BDM is required to make your board work, and we need to be able to load the SM on Linux, really, and with cheap hardware, otherwise it drives the actual price of ownership up.

Do you have any provision for getting the balance of the pins out to another card?

Not sure about the balance meaning
<snip>
Right now there are 6 GPIO pins routed to the connector, and could be 8 or 10... its quite a lot.

Yeah, that is exactly what I meant. You can guarantee that people will want idle and boost control, and various rpm switches and pwm functions etc. I'd say bring ALL the PWM pins out, and a few others, perhaps ALL PWM and ALL ADC, that gives the user a good balance of extra out and extra in. All analog and digital pins can be used as digital inputs and the PWM pins are by far the best choices for outputs.

IE, I didn't mean for testing, though they'd be useful for that too, I meant for real world use. If they were buffered, or at least current limited via resistors and diode clamps etc, that would be awesome/required (I think we should mandate not exposing CPU pins without protection, what do you think?).

Fred.