💬 Easy/Newbie PCB for MySensors
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I used pcbway, was very fast with no taxes or fees via EMS unlike DHL. 3 Days from shipping notice to my door with additional 3 days to have the boards made. I had 3 different board designs made. 30 of this one, and 50 of jModules 1 & 2 EACH (oops). I submitted jModule 1 & 2 together as part of one order, with both boards in 2 zips inside 1 main zip and specified there were 2 boards and they combined them and then cut each individually resulting in 100pcs which is a ton as I expected 25 and 25. I only specified the dimensions of each board in the notes and said there were 2 sizes and 2 designs. Cost was:
$25 for 30pcs of this board specs: "48.66mm * 49.86mm ,Thickness:1.6 mm, 2 Layers, Finished Copper:1 oz Cu"
and only $ 30.00 & 50 pieces (actually 100pcs once cut) specs: "34mm * 23.1mm ,Thickness:1.6 mm, 2 Layers, Finished Copper:1 oz Cu" <-- Width is doubled with both together (oviously)If only I submitted all 3 together.
Only newbie problem was that tNames & tValues weren't printed as part of the silkscreen so I'm missing a bunch of the text including values, mysx pin layout, a bunch of stuff. tPlace was silkscreened just fine, but that is the only layer as far as silkscreening. Not the end of the world but have to either recall or look things up that weren't printed. I'll just have to make a reference card and laminate it. Problem was my fault as their suggested CAM (sfe-gerb274x), which I used after there was no drill file, doesn't include the missing layers in the Top Silkscreen GTO (just checked). I know for next time to double check the selected layers for silkscreen (and others to be safe). Live, learn and now move on to attempting my own design after learning what I want and need from the boards. Likely a middle ground between size of jModule and ease of this board with different daughterboards using MysX or custom connector.
Thanks for this great starting point! I'll be sure to donate, couldn't use openhardware as no way to combine boards or orders.
@nitroburn - thank you for input! I hope it works out for you even without values and names. Good advice with combining the boards for better price. I did so with EasyPCB + the new Easy RFM69 PCB and a secret one. I think i paid 20$ + shipping for 30 boards. (50x50, 50x50 and 25x50). I just submitted zip files and PCBWAY combined them for me.
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@gohan very much so. I didn't see a price difference between having 1 or 2 boards made with the jModules anyways because they are so small. It always is cheaper to panelize your boards which, in the case of pcbway, they will do for you. I didn't even select the panelize option. I left it on single and selected 2 designs as the option and it didn't increase cost likely due to small size. 100mm x 100mm is $5/10 boards so cram whatever you can into that size and your good. I likely could have got way more boards had I thought that through as 2 boards together was 34mm x 23.1mm. I'm not 100% sure the best route but I might have got more had I selected the panelize by pcbway option. There are going to be some sort of fees when you want to cram 5 different designs on one board.
Again, not 100% sure how it works as it will charge more if you request 50pcs over 20pcs but if you can fit more boards in that 100x100 space, it counts as 1 peice even if you end up with 6 as you're paying for a 100x100 board at $5/10pcs. Next time I'd put all the boards into one set of gerbers and lay it out myself to maximize # of boards possible. Actually, before I do that, I'd actually ask if that's what their panelization service would do anyways so am I wasting my time doing it myself, to which they would likely laugh and say, "yes, you pcb ordering newbie", but at least I'd have more boards.
I got a ton of stuff to mock up now to order all crammed together.
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excuse the poor english, phone is being a pain and some advertisement took me away from posting so I had to do it again and no time to proof read right now.@nitroburn I always panelize by hand, because most PCB companies accept it like that. They will ask you to pay if you ask for vcut (v shaped cut between board so you can split by hand), but if you cut yourself then DirtyPCB, Seeed, PCBWay,... don't care. And if you make thickness <1mm it's very easy to cut with basic scissors.
Seeed is also 5$ for 10 100*100mm boards now, and they have no stuff like "paypal fee" and much cheaper shipment costs, at least for me. -
@nitroburn I always panelize by hand, because most PCB companies accept it like that. They will ask you to pay if you ask for vcut (v shaped cut between board so you can split by hand), but if you cut yourself then DirtyPCB, Seeed, PCBWay,... don't care. And if you make thickness <1mm it's very easy to cut with basic scissors.
Seeed is also 5$ for 10 100*100mm boards now, and they have no stuff like "paypal fee" and much cheaper shipment costs, at least for me.@Nca78 - ah so thats why it was so cheap, they have gone from 10$ to 5$ for 10pcs 10x10. PCBWay as well I see now.
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@nitroburn - thank you for input! I hope it works out for you even without values and names. Good advice with combining the boards for better price. I did so with EasyPCB + the new Easy RFM69 PCB and a secret one. I think i paid 20$ + shipping for 30 boards. (50x50, 50x50 and 25x50). I just submitted zip files and PCBWAY combined them for me.
@sundberg84: sadly I only did it for the jModule boards but realize now I should have done it with your board as well since I could have got 4x as many for the same price. I realized after I could have got significantly more of those as well, or just have spent less. Might have had to trim a little bit from the dimensions though as I don't know about clearances using the full 100x100 without room to split the boards, but I could be wrong due to them being square Actually, after just checking pcbway's site it says, "Leave min clearance of 1.6mm between boards for break-routing. For V-score panelization, set the space between boards to be zero." so I could have got 120 boards for $25 as they are actually 48.66x49.86 per board. Or combined different boards together as I think 120 would be overkill :) I never realized how inexpensive it is compared to etching your own. It would be crazy to etch at these prices.
Thanks for the great starting point and learning experience.
@Nca78: Yeah, PCBways base price is $5 for 10 100x100 as well but they don't seem to charge for vcut (doesn't change quote) and allow 0mm spacing so no need to cut. I used EMS to ship and was here in 3 days without taxes or fees unlike DHL has every single time I use them. $15 just to collect $0.10 in tax.
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I never received so fast with EMS.
And I'm always dubious about the ultra positive comments on PCBWay as you never know (in fact, you know it :P ) if it's a way to get a discount for the next order via their marketing program....
I never did it because my experience with them is mixed, they have a fancy website with all process details but the PCB they sent me had really subpar silkscreen, way lower quality than any other PCB makers. And on one of my boards (not EasyPCB which was ok) I had problem with quality with a long track that peeled away when I unsoldered a component to replace it. Never had that on boards from DirtyPCB or Seeed.
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I never received so fast with EMS.
And I'm always dubious about the ultra positive comments on PCBWay as you never know (in fact, you know it :P ) if it's a way to get a discount for the next order via their marketing program....
I never did it because my experience with them is mixed, they have a fancy website with all process details but the PCB they sent me had really subpar silkscreen, way lower quality than any other PCB makers. And on one of my boards (not EasyPCB which was ok) I had problem with quality with a long track that peeled away when I unsoldered a component to replace it. Never had that on boards from DirtyPCB or Seeed.
@Nca78 and I've had a bunch of problems with seeed, however that wasn't related to their pcb services just their store and various bugs with the site that I had to multiple times point out to them and months later still needed to be fixed. (ie, incorrect paypal checkout flow that processes orders without a chance for final review as it should, and says will happen. Other people's PCB orders filling my cart with their gerbers and all. selling a galileo gen2 board right beside a gen1 case with no mention of incompatibility or that the case was for gen1 and at the time only the gen2 and that one case was for sale and they didn't seem to care that it was confusing, plus many other issues across just a couple orders. Seemed to be horrible customer service there.)
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So it is cheaper to combine different boards and have them cut into single boards instead of ordering them on separate orders?
Everytime I panelize anything I get charged for specifying that it is panelized, even if i specify that i've done it and don't need them to do such. Do you just submit the board as a normal board but have your milling and drills such that it allows you to remove them all when you receive the product?
MySensors 2.1.1
Controller - OpenHAB (Virtual Machine)
Gateway - Arduino Mega MQTT Gateway W5100 -
Everytime I panelize anything I get charged for specifying that it is panelized, even if i specify that i've done it and don't need them to do such. Do you just submit the board as a normal board but have your milling and drills such that it allows you to remove them all when you receive the product?
@Samuel235 you should not specify that you have panelized your boards.
And yes I use milling for complex shapes so I just have a few straight lines to cut with scissors. I did it with DirtyPCB last time and had no problem.
Seeed explains you should just not select panelizing related options when you order and they will not care. -
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Thought the settings on the album should apply to the images also.
Here is a link to the album: https://goo.gl/photos/bX9HZSXdbMCvuyAv9
Does it work? -
@jens-persson What's the 0.1 uF capacitor next to the battery terminals for?
@maghac - below the booster on the right side? it is an output capacitor to filter the output on the booster. There isnt any evidence this works and there are capacitors on the booster itself as well, but I found that a 0.1uF capacitor worked great on one of my nodes which was all ST=FAIL (radio transmit/ack fail) until i added this. I have found that a cheramic capacitors on the booster worked best for some reason.
Controller: Proxmox VM - Home Assistant
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - W5100 Ethernet, Gw Shield Nrf24l01+ 2,4Ghz
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - Gw Shield RFM69, 433mhz
RFLink GW - Arduino Mega + RFLink Shield, 433mhz -
@maghac - below the booster on the right side? it is an output capacitor to filter the output on the booster. There isnt any evidence this works and there are capacitors on the booster itself as well, but I found that a 0.1uF capacitor worked great on one of my nodes which was all ST=FAIL (radio transmit/ack fail) until i added this. I have found that a cheramic capacitors on the booster worked best for some reason.
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@sundberg84 Aha, good to know. Can't hurt to add it I suppose.
But I was actually wondering about the other one - to the left and above where the 5V->3.3V regulator would sit.
@maghac - this one?
Its to maintain stability of the voltage regulator. If you look at different datasheet most voltage regulators has a typical application schematics where different capacitors is added before and after to make this. So the 10 and 0,1uF work together. Why 0,1 and 10? Well - I have seen this setup on the forum many times so I just went with that. There is alof to read about this, but I think the smaller cap can react faster while the bigger cap have more juice to give so to say.
Controller: Proxmox VM - Home Assistant
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - W5100 Ethernet, Gw Shield Nrf24l01+ 2,4Ghz
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - Gw Shield RFM69, 433mhz
RFLink GW - Arduino Mega + RFLink Shield, 433mhz -
@maghac - this one?
Its to maintain stability of the voltage regulator. If you look at different datasheet most voltage regulators has a typical application schematics where different capacitors is added before and after to make this. So the 10 and 0,1uF work together. Why 0,1 and 10? Well - I have seen this setup on the forum many times so I just went with that. There is alof to read about this, but I think the smaller cap can react faster while the bigger cap have more juice to give so to say.
@sundberg84 Ok, I see. I do have those caps on my (so far) only 5V mysensor node, somewhere I read that you need them but I wasn't sure why - thanks for the explanation.
But I suppose there is no reason to add them unless you are actually using the voltage regulator to power the radio? I noticed that @jens-persson added the smaller cap on the pics he posted earlier, but those nodes were battery powered.
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@sundberg84 Ok, I see. I do have those caps on my (so far) only 5V mysensor node, somewhere I read that you need them but I wasn't sure why - thanks for the explanation.
But I suppose there is no reason to add them unless you are actually using the voltage regulator to power the radio? I noticed that @jens-persson added the smaller cap on the pics he posted earlier, but those nodes were battery powered.
@maghac - not really, I have not used them with batteries.
In that setup the 0,1cap is in paralell with the 4,7uF cap for the radio. Sure, might give some more stability to the radio itself but the 4,7uF cap should be enought. If you experience alof of errors you can try adding different values here to give more stability - but in normal operations it should not be needed.Edit - sorry not 0,1uF, but 10uF cap is in parallell. The 0,1uF does nothing if you dont have a voltage regulator.
Edit 2 (note to myself) - Maybe I should change the 0,1 and 10uF for next rev so 10 is on the input and 0,1uf on th output instead.
Controller: Proxmox VM - Home Assistant
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - W5100 Ethernet, Gw Shield Nrf24l01+ 2,4Ghz
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - Gw Shield RFM69, 433mhz
RFLink GW - Arduino Mega + RFLink Shield, 433mhz -
@maghac - not really, I have not used them with batteries.
In that setup the 0,1cap is in paralell with the 4,7uF cap for the radio. Sure, might give some more stability to the radio itself but the 4,7uF cap should be enought. If you experience alof of errors you can try adding different values here to give more stability - but in normal operations it should not be needed.Edit - sorry not 0,1uF, but 10uF cap is in parallell. The 0,1uF does nothing if you dont have a voltage regulator.
Edit 2 (note to myself) - Maybe I should change the 0,1 and 10uF for next rev so 10 is on the input and 0,1uf on th output instead.
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@sundberg84 Ok, it doesn't hurt since capacitors in parallel are simply just added (if I remember my electronics classes correctly).
So the end result is that you have a 14.7 uF cap on the radio.
@maghac it is not just as simple as the capacitor size is added, true it is added but different size capacitors also filter disturbances at different frequencies. So adding different size capacitors in parallel can act as a more effective disturbance filter.
- Tomas
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@maghac it is not just as simple as the capacitor size is added, true it is added but different size capacitors also filter disturbances at different frequencies. So adding different size capacitors in parallel can act as a more effective disturbance filter.
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A capacitor is considered a short to an AC signal and it works on certain frequencies depending on the setup. So if you get any AC ripple on your output of your regulator, the capacitor is used to smooth that out. Electrolytics are also use to give a quick extra burst of power when needed. That is why they are used for things like the incoming power for the radio. The radio transmits every so often and if you were to look at the power coming in to the radio on a scope with no capacitor on it, you would probably see dips in the power when it transmits. The dips in power could cause it to fall outside the operating range of the radio for a split second giving you transmission loss. The electrolytic is there to supply that extra jolt to stabilize the power on the transmit cycles.
And @maghac, you are correct, parallel capacitance adds and series capacitance divides, which is the opposite of resistors where series resistance adds and parallel resistance divides.
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@sundberg84: sadly I only did it for the jModule boards but realize now I should have done it with your board as well since I could have got 4x as many for the same price. I realized after I could have got significantly more of those as well, or just have spent less. Might have had to trim a little bit from the dimensions though as I don't know about clearances using the full 100x100 without room to split the boards, but I could be wrong due to them being square Actually, after just checking pcbway's site it says, "Leave min clearance of 1.6mm between boards for break-routing. For V-score panelization, set the space between boards to be zero." so I could have got 120 boards for $25 as they are actually 48.66x49.86 per board. Or combined different boards together as I think 120 would be overkill :) I never realized how inexpensive it is compared to etching your own. It would be crazy to etch at these prices.
Thanks for the great starting point and learning experience.
@Nca78: Yeah, PCBways base price is $5 for 10 100x100 as well but they don't seem to charge for vcut (doesn't change quote) and allow 0mm spacing so no need to cut. I used EMS to ship and was here in 3 days without taxes or fees unlike DHL has every single time I use them. $15 just to collect $0.10 in tax.
@nitroburn said in 💬 Easy/Newbie PCB for MySensors:
@Nca78: Yeah, PCBways base price is $5 for 10 100x100 as well but they don't seem to charge for vcut (doesn't change quote) and allow 0mm spacing so no need to cut. I used EMS to ship and was here in 3 days without taxes or fees unlike DHL has every single time I use them. $15 just to collect $0.10 in tax.
So yesterday I tried to submit my PCBs to PCBWay, they accept similar design if you don't check panelizing options, but my interest is to lower prices by combining different PCBs on the same board. I don't need them to cut anything, but they just refused and changed to panelized version. In the end it was 137$ compared to less than 70 with Seeed.
So PCBWay is great to have many similar boards (but who really needs 50-60 items of the same board ?) but if you want to save costs by combining multiple boards it's not an option. -
@nitroburn said in 💬 Easy/Newbie PCB for MySensors:
@Nca78: Yeah, PCBways base price is $5 for 10 100x100 as well but they don't seem to charge for vcut (doesn't change quote) and allow 0mm spacing so no need to cut. I used EMS to ship and was here in 3 days without taxes or fees unlike DHL has every single time I use them. $15 just to collect $0.10 in tax.
So yesterday I tried to submit my PCBs to PCBWay, they accept similar design if you don't check panelizing options, but my interest is to lower prices by combining different PCBs on the same board. I don't need them to cut anything, but they just refused and changed to panelized version. In the end it was 137$ compared to less than 70 with Seeed.
So PCBWay is great to have many similar boards (but who really needs 50-60 items of the same board ?) but if you want to save costs by combining multiple boards it's not an option.@Nca78 - This is exactly why i was shocked when someone got away with it. They get personally checked every time and soon as they pick something up where they can see two separate boards there then they refuse it unless you paid the extra for the panelising.
