HotCat's CatPower CPU board & PNP IO/Power board for Citroen

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HotCat
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

Post by HotCat »

Fred wrote:Comment from facebook, "CatSquirt? OMG. Does it smell as bad as it sounds?" - as much as I did laugh, quite a lot, he is right. If you want this accepted by the English speaking world you may want to reconsider the name. Cat squirt brings images of cats marking their territory. I didn't think about this earlier. How about CatECU or CatEMS? :-) Or pick a type of cat like Marcos did with Puma and I did with Cheetah :-)
So I choose 'CatPower' names my project and another code name for my first board on TU5JP/K engine. that's 'Migrant worker'
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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HotCat wrote:I got stock VR sensor mounted on crankshaft rather than camshaft, so it is impossible to run full sequential injection. Run semi sequential injection is possible, but as I am a newbie on electricity, I want to make my engine idle ASAP, then consider optimize it in progress
You should wire the engine full sequential back to the board to give you more wiring flexibility if you should upgrade sensors later. As for getting it running ASAP, running semi sequential won't take you any longer, you should definitely go with that right from the start. Trust me on that! :-)
I do export serial pins, I decide to install MAX232 on I/O board and I won't mount DB9 connector as it is awkward, use 2 pin header instead
I would strongly recommend some sort of UART to USB chip such as what Puma and Ravage use, that one is probably hard to get in China, but the prolific one should be easy enough to get.
Fred wrote:You should also have 100k pull downs on all digital output pins, ie, port B, port T 2 - 7, etc.
why pull downs is necessary? I don't find such pull downs on Puma board
Yes, they are missing and need adding. The Puma design is FULL of holes/problems. Look to RavAGE for the answer, it is nearly perfect. I can show you video of why, if you want.
HotCat wrote:Does that means GPL is more restricted than MIT? I am living in a nation with no sense about license, I need to strive hard to learn something about them. In fact, I clone a project from Marcos and work on it, I don't notice DFH stuff and the TAPR license it use
There are basically two types of Free and Open Source Software licenses (and very few hw licenses, but that is a different story). You can have one that is more free and the other that is more free. Clear? :-) OK:

One gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, including take the work and use it in a non-free way, selling it without sharing the code to your customers, which more or less makes it not worth selling. That type is more free because you can do whatever you want, literally no restrictions. MIT and the revised BSD license are two examples of that.

The other gives you the freedom to do more or less whatever you want, even sell it, but you are forced to keep it free by giving away the source files when you sell it or send a binary, even if free of cost. In this way it is less free on the individual basis, but more free for the future. GPL and TAPR OHL are examples of this.

It applies to your hardware design in the following way: If you sell a product with an OHL license on its PCB, then you must include the design files with it, schematics, layout and gerbers. That lets the next guy work on it and make it even better, and so the community, in theory, benefits.

In contrast, with MIT/BSD, the community benefits, but so do indviduals, indescriminately, which somewhat damages the spirit of things. For example, Microsoft Winblows is based on the BSD network infrastructure. Look at the horrible monopoly they have created with that. Not cool.
HotCat wrote:I am so interesting about that engine, tell me more? what type of vehicle dose this engine powered for? in which province?
One of those 1.0 four cylinder Suzuki clones that you can find in every second vehicle in China :-) It wasn't in a vehicle, though. I won't say any more and it's not interesting anyway, really.
HotCat wrote:So I choose 'CatPower' names my project and another code name for my first board on TU5JP/K engine. that's 'Migrant worker'
CatPower is a good choice! I don't understand the "Migrant worker" idea, though, can you explain? :-)

Fred.
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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HotCat - love it mate! keep up the good work! excellent to see some people taking on the hardware challenge! :-)
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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Dan wrote:HotCat - love it mate! keep up the good work! excellent to see some people taking on the hardware challenge! :-)
I like your Ravage project, very beautiful and neat. I learn a lot from it and decide to redraw my I/O board schema follow your way.
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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jharvey wrote:
HotCat wrote:Does that means GPL is more restricted than MIT?
This depends on who you ask, and what your goals are. GPL people like to poo poo MIT by claiming it has weak copyleft, while MIT people like to poo poo GPL by claiming it's viral.

Any how, enough of this garbage, especially if your in china where your culture doesn't toss you in jail for these reasons. Keep up the dev work, that's much more valuable time.
Yes, it's hard for me to understand the consequence of license within a short time. My purpose is simple, to port FreeEMS on my Citroen ZX and contribute all the code and schema back. I don't expect to earn money by claiming FreeEMS as proprietary project and won't let otherone to do it. So I think GPL license is fit, is that right?
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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Does anyone else hear a funny echo in here? LOL... I might split that post into a new thread in an appropriate section... Done: viewtopic.php?f=45&t=1357

Re the license understanding, it's like I already said, and Jared reiterated (I swear that I heard an echo), one gives you the freedom to cash in and the other enforces future users freedom. The idea being that people shouldn't end up using the code written for open use in a non open way, and thus meaning that everyone who uses it has the option of making changes.

Re your question, yes GPL fits your terms correctly, and so does TAPR OHL. You can't just up and change the license, though. You're stuck with whatever you end up with unless the copyright owners provide you with express permission to change it, Jared did, above, but to change it, IF you actually used any of their files, you also need permission from Marcos. If you didn't REALLY use their files, but just started with their repo, then you don't need permission at all.

Enough licensing talk in this thread, end of story, use the other one :-) Let's keep this for sweet Designed In China hardware instead! :-)

Fred.
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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I redraw my I/O board and adopt Ravage schema style, looking much better now. I'll upload my whole project on github latter on
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Redraw of my I/O board, adopt Ravage schema style
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

Post by Fred »

HotCat, I congratulate you! That is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING AWESOME!!! :-)

It's great to see the same calibre of work coming out of KiCad! Fantastic :-)

Can you tell us the steps you went through to make it look like this?

So impressed, well done again! :-)

Fred.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
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Dan
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

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HotCat - very impressive mate! I am proud! :-)
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Re: My core board & I/O board design, need your comments

Post by HotCat »

Fred wrote: Can you tell us the steps you went through to make it look like this?
Fred.
I've uploaded the whole schema on github at https://github.com/HotCat/CatSquirt, add a license and explain the reason why I choose code name 'migrant worker'. Recently I spend a lot of time playing around with git, now I can fluently create branches, work on them, merge branch works into master trunk, redo or undo a change. Giving me enough confidence to put code under git control.

Originally, I know nothing about KiCAD, I use pirate Protel 99SE to draw schema and PCB layout because Protel is prevalent in China. The PCB factory can accept Protel PCB file directly without having to convert to gerber files. Protel is buggy and painful when I create custom footprint and PCB layout, compare to KiCAD, Protel 99SE was only a toy. Thanks to Marcos and his Puma board, I download the whole project and open with KiCAD. When I open the puma.brd, I was deeply shocked by the visual effect of KiCAD. At that time I decide to drop Protel completely and practise with PCBNEW, I repeatly drag components here and there, rename them, delete them, create arbitary footprint, place as many wire as I can. But the puma.sch was not as elegant as the puma.brd, too many hierarchical sheet box all around, most of them contain only a few resistors and a couple of wires occupied the whole A4 paper. It is unacceptable when I need to print on real A4 pager. What makes worse was the hierarchical sheet also exports power pins, adding extra complexity and less readable. Ravage project promotes to use custom power pin to address this issue. So I create dedicated power pins on KiCAD. When I first submit my schema, I admit I inherit a lot from puma.sch including bad ideas descripting above. After I saw Ravage project, it gives me a standard how an ideal ECU schema should be. So I quickly copy the style, merge the discrete hierarchical sheets together, remove extra power pins, create extra hierarchical sheets to show how the I/O board connect to my core board as well as OEM harness interface. After I put them all together, I found I have to release them to our community. A few months ago, Fred ask me to see my work peronally, I don't know how to reply because it was drew badly and ugly, I can't tolerance it. But this time, it's my honor to share the whole project to all of our community because I found my self standing on the shoulder of giant
Last edited by HotCat on Fri Oct 14, 2011 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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