PCB Idea List

PCB Idea List.md

These are all ideas for making open source circuit boards and/or products:

• Use AAA batteries instead of coin cells for chibitronics kits.
• IR receiver to USB adapter which looks like keyboard to PC and works with universal remotes. Main target first is to use my Panasonic TV remote in the Cable Box mode to control MythTV.
• Logic analyzer which is similar to the DreamSource Lab DSLogic Pro but which is actually open source and documented and able to be purchased.
• SPI flash programmer using USB high speed, as read and verify steps would be much faster, leading to faster cycle time.
• USB to serial adapter which supports 5, 3.3, and 1.8 V logic levels and the normal FTDI 6 pin interface as found on BBB.
• GigE Ethernet switch
• Power over Ethernet addon for above switch
• Tuxedoboard
• WWVB USB receiver with PPS output and LCD/OLED screen

For 60 kHz antenna tuning, Atilla told of a cheap way to avoid needing a VNA: "Use a small uC to produce 59kHz and 61kHz tones. couple that into your antenna with a small loop. rectify the output of the antenna with diode. tune the antenna until both tones result in the same output voltage."

So, for WWVB first prototype board, provide way to output (filtered?) PWM (which is a sine wave?) and take input to a diode to be measured by multimeter separate from micro controller circuits.

A decent ferrite material for antenna creation is 78 material, it generally is available in "RFID rod" shape and is good for <200kHz applications. Maybe a rod like Fair-Rite 4078377511 which is $1.37 at Mouser?

For the IR receiver, probably better to just buy one of these as it looks quite similar to what I want: https://www.crowdsupply.com/longan-lab/irduino

The Atmel/Microchip SAMA5D2x parts are quite inexpensive and very capable! The 196 pin BGA package is 0.75 mm ball pitch, which with Macrofab's standard manufacturing capabilities, should allow for the outer 4 rings of balls to be broken out in a 4 layer board (albeit with non-ideal reference for some of them as the reference will be a power plane and/or the power/ground planes will split on layers 2/4 which isn't a good idea).

The ideas are very interesting but does anyone know how to install these boards in the device? I gave my circuit board to check files, and now I can't install in place lol:) That was a two of days ago. I had a remote control that controlled the garage, it had simple functions and also turned on and off the light. The remote started making mistakes, there were crashes and sometimes it didn't work, so I decided to make a circuit check and find out what the problem was. After I did the repair I can't install the board back in the remote lol :) By the way, I created this remote control and installed it, you can also add it to this list of ideas:)