Single Sided PCB Arduino Clones

Now those that know phenoptix board will know it's an obsession of mine to avoid vias. Single sided is best but I can rarely achieve it. The first version of the Cylon PCB was actually single sided but having to alternate the polarity of the LEDs as you inserted them was going to cause some problems. Doing single sided boards is fairly difficult, so they always impress me when I see them. This morning I spotted this by way of the electronics-lab blog - the Nanino by Johan von Konow.

You can see straight away that it's beautifully laid out. The tag line is that it is DIY friendly but there are too many holes for my liking in that prototyping area if I'm entirely honest. It does however give or shall we say represent, as nothing is given (BY-NC-SA!) a simple one sided Arduino compatible PCB. This has of course been done before, and it would seem by people who understand licencing. The Aryduino is another great looking board and actually acknowledges the copy left licence that Arduino is released under.

I had intended to write this whole blog about the Nanino but the licencing has really annoyed me. The Aryduino has power management anyway which makes it much better. Dr. Ayars lists the pros and cons of his board as follows

Hoo-ah:

  • Standard Arduino form-factor and mount-points.
  • Accepts standard Arduino shields.
  • Single-sided board, easy to make with toner-transfer method. 
  • 16MHz ATmega328.
  • No SMT parts.
  • On-board 5V regulation.
  • Screw-terminal power-in connector, rather than barrel jack.
  • Pin-13 LED.

Meh:

  • Lacks on-board USB-Serial conversion, so programming requires an FTDI cable.
  • No 3.3V regulator.
  • This is as detailed a board as I ever want to make using toner-transfer.  
  • No TX/RX LEDs.
  • No ISP connector.
  • Three component-side jumpers. Couldn't quite get all traces on the back side!

Which is a really fair and honest appraisal. His does have three jumpers but that's still pretty good with so many components. The populated boards have a sort of "fun" look about them, it's probably the detail of using different coloured jumper wires. I tend to use resistor and LED legs for that particular task!

The Eagle files have been shared too, again unlike the Nanino. Making the Aryduino a really very nice Open Source project. That is worth celebrating. It's a real shame about the Nanino, Johan you've let yourself and Open Source down. Copy left you dufus! Probably a little strong but I'm getting fed up of celebrating sudo Open Source or Fauxpen Source projects. We need to start calling BS on some of these. /rant

These aren't the first single sided Arduino boards to have existed but what I have seen this morning. More can be found on the Arduino forums and via the magic of google!

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